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ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – There is a waiting list for a course on Kanye West at Washington University. The course is called, “The Politics of Kanye West: Black Genius and Sonic Aesthetics.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that there are 75 students enrolled.

A description of the class from Washington University states, “As a hip-hop artist Kanye West has had unprecedented impact on the sonic force of music, fashion, politics, and videography. Coupling his controversial moments, with his corpus of musical texts with special focus on sonic production, this course illuminates “Mr. West” as a case studey for interrogating the interplay between fame, gender, sexuality, and race. Mostly, we explore how racialized ways of doing iconography, complex ways of seeing, creates a distorted or reductive frame through which we see the black and famous. Nonetheless, the course oscillates with entertaining these nuances, while being entertained by the decade-long catalogue of music and visual imagery. Together, we extract the “Politics of Mr. West” in his music and life, while also illuminating the importance of a politics of genius-making in the larger arc of black pop culture tradition.”

Dr. Jeffrey McCune, an associate professor in African-American Studies and the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies departments, will teach the course.

The course was also offered at Georgia State University in 2015.