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  2. FYSEMR 72I

Everyday I’m Hustlin’: Pop Culture, Youth, and the African City
FYSEMR 72I

Course Information

Description

What does it mean to hustle? Across the world, young people are navigating uncertainty, delayed adulthood, precarious work, and the pressure to build a future in cities that both promise and withhold opportunity. This seminar explores these questions through contemporary African cities, where youth are creating new forms of work, style, sound, performance, and public presence.
 
Rather than treating popular culture as mere entertainment, we approach it as a window into everyday life and social change. We examine how music, fashion, comedy, street art, transport culture, protest movements, and digital media illuminate the hopes, frustrations, and aspirations of urban youth living through prolonged periods of “waithood.” Along the way, we ask: How do young people transform crisis into creativity? What does it mean to build a future in cities marked by both possibility and precarity? And what can African popular culture teach us about youth, inequality, imagination, and urban life more broadly?
 
Through readings in anthropology, history, cultural studies, and urban studies, alongside films, music, visual art, and popular media, students will investigate the relationship between youth, popular culture, and urban transformation. The course ultimately asks how ordinary people make cities livable, meaningful, and exciting, and what their everyday acts of creativity reveal about power, belonging, and social change in contemporary Africa and beyond.

Class Notes

First-Year Seminars are available only to first-year students. You may apply to both Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 First-Year Seminars via the FYS lottery between July 6 and August 6, 2026 at 11:59PM-midnight.You may apply to as many seminars each term as you would like, but we recommend you apply to at least six in fall and three in spring.As part of your application, you must provide a brief statement on why you are interested in each seminar. You will be notified of lottery results for both fall and spring seminars at 5 pm on August 11. If you are unsuccessful in the lottery, you may still join any seminar with open seats. A list of open seminars and instructions on next steps will be available on the First-Year Seminar Program website August 11 at 12 Noon.

School Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Credits 4
Cross Reg

Not Available for Cross Registration

Course Component Seminar
Grading Basis FAS Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
Course Requirements Course open to First-Year Students Only
Exam/Final Deadline Dec. 17, 2026
General Education N/A
Quantitative Reasoning with Data N/A
Divisional Distribution None
Course Level Primarily for Undergraduate Students