Decatur native A.D. Carson – former Springfi eld High School English instructor and writer-in-residence at Benedictine University – has recently been named “assistant professor of hip-hop and the global south” for the University of Virginia’s McIntire Department of Music. He will begin teaching writing and composition classes in the upcoming fall 2017 semester, along with a course entitled “The black voice.” Carson, once a regular fi xture at Springfi eld open-mic nights, garnered national press attention earlier this year when he earned his Ph.D. from Clemson University (South Carolina) with a dissertation in the form of 34-song rap album entitled Owning my masters: rhetoric of rhyme and revolution. The album can be streamed at http:// phd.aydeethegreat.com. Meanwhile, Carson – who regularly clashed with the administration at Clemson over that university’s history of institutional racism – continues to write and record music.