Lavender, Isiah
M 9:10 AM
Park Hall 0067
ENGL 8720 - Crash Course in Afrofuturism
Black culture critic Greg Tate once said that “Black people live the estrangement that science fiction writers imagine.” In this respect, Afrofuturism has quickly become a rich and valuable vein of analysis for science fiction in its brief existence. Since its birth in 1993, Afrofuturism remains one of the most critical, creative, and contested terms in the literary/science fiction community. Afrofuturist thought rethinks race in science fiction, reaches new emancipatory mindscapes that will further break apart the false ideal of a colorblind society still reproduced in science fiction’s many visions of a monochrome future where whiteness remains the standard of civilization. Welcome to a crash course in Afrofuturism, where we will dive headfirst into theorizing on the idea from its inception to competing concepts such as Nnedi Okorafor’s Africanfuturism before engaging with a variety of Afrofuturist narratives across film, music, and literature. All interested graduate students please contact me for a constantly evolving reading list. We will be reading classics alongside fresh unexplored novels.
Required Texts:
Pauline Hopkins, Of One Blood, The MIT Press, ISBN-13: 978-0262544290
George Schuyler, Black No More, Penguin Classics ISBN-13: 978-0241505724
Samuel R. Delany, A, B, C: Three Short Novels, Vintage, ISBN-13: 978-1101911426
Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed, Grand Central Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1538751480
John A. Williams, The Man Who Cried I Am, Library of America, ISBN-13: 978-1598537611
Karen Lord, Unraveling, DAW, ISBN-13: 978-0756416904
P. Djèlí Clark, The Black God’s Drums, TOR.com, ISBN-13: 978-1250294715
Megan Giddings, The Women Could Fly, Amistad, ISBN-13: 978-0063117013
Maurice Broaddus, Sweep of Stars, Tor, ISBN-13: 978-1250264947
Andrea Hairston, Master of Poisons, Tor, ISBN-13: 978-1250260567
Ness Brown, Scourge Between Stars, Tor, ISBN-13: 978-1250834683
Kemi Ashing-Giwa, The Splinter in the Sky, S &S/Saga Press, ISBN-13: 978-1668008485