Welcome to Afrofuturism & the Hurston Legacy, a collection of open educational resources (OERs) and open-access course syllabi for the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts & Humanities and its 2020-2024 Afrofuturism Conference Cycle.

Our mission, as stated by Afrofuturism Conference Cycle curator Dr. Julian Chambliss, is to "bring together scholars, artists, teachers, the public -- people who are animated by Afrofuturism as it exists today -- and connect them to a broader legacy of The Black Imaginary."

Please begin by reviewing About the Course for an introduction and orientation to the 2020-2021 Afrofuturism Syllabus, which bridges the organizing themes of the first two years of the five-year Afrofuturism Conference Cycle: "What is Afrofuturism?" and "What is the Sound of Afrofuturism?"

Content posted here will remain publicly accessible and may be incorporated into other courses, in part or in full, via links to this site. Suggested citation: French, Scot. Syllabus for ZORA! Festival Afrofuturism Course, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Fall 2020-Spring 2021. STARS, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/afrofuturism_syllabus_about/.

Syllabus Schedule

The course consists of weekly Conversations & Explorations leading up to, through, and beyond the live-streamed 2021 Afrofuturism Conference. We invite you to participate in this ongoing Conversation/Exploration and make plans to attend the 2021 Afrofuturism Conference scheduled for Jan. 28-29, 2021!

New materials will be released each week, beginning Nov. 1, 2020. You can find a link to each week's content on this page as it is published.

Part I: Reflecting on the 2020 ZORA! Festival Conference Theme: What is Afrofuturism?

• Week 1 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Julian Chambliss on Afrofuturism and the Zora Neale Hurston Festival; 2020 Afrofuturism Conference Participant Interview Clips (Released 11/1/2020)
• Week 2 - Webinar on Afrofuturism with Dr. Julian Chambliss, Dr. Phillip Cunningham, and Trent Tomengo (Released 11/8/2020)
• Week 3 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Kinitra Brooks: The Roots of Afrofuturism (Released 11/15/2020)
• Week 4 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Isiah Lavender III: The Search for an Afrofuturist Legacy (Released 11/22/2020)
• Week 5 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Reynaldo Anderson: The Black Speculative Tradition (Released 11/29/2020)
• Week 6 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Michele Tracy Berger: The Afrofuturist Aesthetic (Released 12/6/2020)
• Week 7 - Webinar with Dr. Julian Chambliss and Dr. Kinitra Brooks (Released 12/13/2020)
• Week 8 - Podcast Interview with Maurice Broaddus: The Space to Dream (Released 12/20/2020)
• Week 9 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Chesya Burke: Reimagining the Future (Released 12/27/2020)
• Week 10 - Podcast Interview with P. Djèlí Clark: Retrofuturism (Released 1/3/2021)
• Week 11 - Podcast Interview with Tenea D. Johnson: Building Black Future Worlds (Released 1/10/2021)
• Week 12 - Podcast Interview with Dr. Iheoma Nwachukwu: The Reality of Afrofuturism (Released 1/17/2021)
• Week 13 - Dr. Julian Chambliss’s Spotify Playlist on The Sound of Afrofuturism: Mapping the Sonic Imagination (Released 1/24/2021)

Part II: "Live" From the 2021 ZORA! Festival Academic Conference Program: What is the Sound of Afrofuturism?

• Week 14 - Please join us for the 2021 ZORA! Festival Academic Conference, 1/29-1/30/2021
• Week 15 - Dr. Regina N. Bradley on Hip Hop, OutKast, and Black Culture and Identity in the Post-Civil Rights South (Released 2/7/2021)
• Week 16 - Dr. Eric Steinskog, Keynote Speaker, on Speculative Sounds: Aural History, Sonic Fiction, and Afrofuturism (Released 2/14/2021)
• Week 17 - Dr. Paul Ortiz, Keynote Speaker, on Oral History, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Black Freedom Struggle through Storytelling and Song (Released 2/21/2021)
• Week 18 - Dr. Toniesha Taylor, Keynote Speaker, on "Mocked to Death by Time": Zora Neale Hurston as the Sound of Afrofuture Present Past to Future Past (Released 2/28/2021)
• Week 19 - Panel Discussion on What is the Sound of Afrofuturism? (Released 3/7/2021)

Part III: Reflecting on the 2021 Afrofuturism Conference Theme: What is the Sound of Afrofuturism?

• Week 20 - Afrofuturism Exhibit (Released 3/14/2021)
• Week 21 - Sun-Ra (Released 3/21/2021)
• Week 22 - Janelle Monae (Released 3/28/2021)