Academic Involvement with Hip-Hop: In May of 2005, Furia received a B.A. with distinction in Sociology from Yale University and completed his year-long senior thesis entitled, “What Makes An Emcee Dope: The Art of Emceein' and Authenticity in Hip-Hop.”  Furia managed to weave Hip-Hop related topics into roughly half of his term papers while at Yale, in classes such as “Funk: The Re-Africanization of American Popular Song,” “Reading and Writing Poetry,” “Hip-Hop Music and Culture,” and “Topics in Contemporary Theory.”  He spoke on a panel of artists and academics at the 35th Anniversary of the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale in 2004 on the topic: the culture and politics of Hip-Hop, the commercialism of the Black aesthetic, and changing images of ethnicity and power. Most recently, he presented his senior thesis at the Lehman College Hip-Hop Conference in the Bronx, NY on October 21st, 2005.