Matthew Oware

Matthew Oware is the Lester Martin Jones Professor of Sociology and the current director of Africana Studies. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in Bloomington. At DePauw, Dr. Oware served two terms as chair of the Sociology and Anthropology department. He is the recipient of the George and Virginia Crane Distinguished Teaching Award and the Edwin L. Minar Jr. Scholarship Award. Professor Oware teaches a variety of courses including Contemporary Society, Methods of Social Research, Senior Seminar, Sociology of Popular Culture, Sociology of Hip Hop, Race and Ethnic Relations in the United States, and Masculinities, among others. Dr. Oware's current book, "I Got Something to Say: Race, Gender, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music," (Palgrave Macmillan) uses systematic, analytic, and interdisciplinary approaches to examining the lyrics of millennial rap artists. He also has publications in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Black Studies, Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts, the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and the Journal of African American Studies, among others.