Bio-Digital Jazz: Reflections on Emergent Multi/race/less/ness in Hip-Hop and Belize
- When
- Thursday, November 19, 20265:30 PM – 7:00 PM MSTAdd to calendarGoogle Calendar
- Where
- UCCS Centennial Hall- Room CENT 203Open in Maps
- Hosted by
- College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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About
Bio-Digital Jazz: Reflections on Emergent Multi/race/less/ness in Hip-Hop and Belize
Guest Speaker: Dr. Jon Ivan Gill Associate Professor of Philosophy, Gustavus Adolphus College
Join us for a thought-provoking lecture exploring the intersections of Hip-Hop culture, racial identity, nationality, and philosophy.
Drawing from his book Multi/race/less/ness: A Process Alternative to Category (Bloomsbury, 2025), Dr. Jon Ivan Gill examines how identity can move beyond traditional racial categories toward more expansive, fluid, and inclusive ways of understanding ourselves and our communities.
Through the examples of underground Hip-Hop culture and Belizean nationality, Dr. Gill explores how culture and national belonging can challenge fixed racial classifications while creating new possibilities for identity and community. The discussion will also examine how colonial histories, racial trauma, and inherited categories continue to shape our understanding of race.
Drawing on the philosophical perspectives of Alfred North Whitehead, Hunbatz Men, and Victor Montejo, this presentation invites attendees to reconsider the relationships among race, culture, identity, and the ongoing process of becoming.
About the Speaker
Dr. Jon Ivan Gill is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota. His work explores philosophy not simply as an intellectual discipline but as a lived practice shaped by culture, experience, and creative expression.
His scholarship challenges the traditional boundaries of Western philosophy, examining how philosophical insights emerge in unexpected spaces, from underground Hip-Hop performances to everyday experiences across cultures.
Dr. Gill is the author of Underground Rap as Religion: A Theopoetic Examination of a Process Aesthetic Religion (Routledge, 2019) and Multi/race/less/ness: A Process Alternative to Category (Bloomsbury, 2025).
He is also a member of the Chicago progressive Hip-Hop collective Tomorrow Kings, performing as an emcee under the name Gilead7.
All are welcome to attend this engaging exploration of philosophy, Hip-Hop, culture, and identity.