Tupac in the lecture hall: a class at UC Berkeley

Original: “UC Berkeley offers Shakur class” · Associated Press, reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun · no byline · September 8, 1997

“Move over, Shakespeare” was how the AP item from Berkeley began. On the first anniversary of his death, the University of California offered a course on the poetry of Tupac Shakur, and more than 100 people signed up.

Full credit for “the Bob Dylan of our day”

There was no professor at the lectern: Arvand Elihu, a junior, taught the class with the university’s approval. It carried full credit and was graded pass/fail. His reasoning fit into one sentence: “He’s the Bob Dylan of our day.”

Leila Steinberg, who says she was Tupac’s first manager, was also involved. Tupac had “a phenomenal gift,” she said, and she announced that she was working with Afeni Shakur on a volume of Tupac’s poems.

From scandal-plagued rapper to subject of study

The item is an early sign of how quickly Tupac went from scandal-plagued rapper to a subject of serious attention after his death. MTV covered the class the same day (see Majoring in Tupac). As early as January 1998, MTV reported that the University of Wyoming was offering a Tupac seminar too. More universities and conferences followed later.

A book of poems shapes the image of the poet

Steinberg had known Tupac since the spring of 1989, when the 17-year-old joined her poetry class in Santa Rosa in the Bay Area; for a while he lived with her family.

The collection she announced came out on November 1, 1999, as The Rose That Grew from Concrete. It gathers poems Tupac wrote between 1989 and 1991, framed by a preface from Afeni Shakur, a foreword by Nikki Giovanni and an introduction by Steinberg. Ever since, the book has shaped the image of Tupac as a poet.