“A quarter century after its founding in New York’s South Bronx, the culture of beats, rhymes, and life is finding new devotees in classrooms, conferences, and faculty meetings coast-to-coast. Berkeley, Stanford, Michigan, Yale, Harvard, New York University, and M.I.T. have each boasted courses examining some aspect of the culture, while the prestigious annual American Studies and Modern Language Association conferences have featured similar panels. Some snicker that as long as Princeton theologian Cornel West doesn’t record a follow-up to his 2001 album, Sketches of My Culture, the academy will continue unfettered in its engagement of the global, billion-dollar culture.”