Image: Participants in the Afrofuturism Writers' Pavilion at the 2020 Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. Dr. Nwachukwu is in the back row, second from the left. Front row, left to right: Maurice Broaddus, Dr. Chesya Burke. Back row, left to right: P. Djèlí Clark, Dr. Iheoma Nwachukwu, Bill Campbell, Dr. Michele Tracey Berger, Tenea D. Johnson. Image Credit: Dr. Michele Tracey Berger.

Welcome to Week 12 of the ZORA! Festival 2020-2021 Afrofuturism Course!

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?"

Note: Each week the course coordinator will release new content related to the conference themes. 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/.

Conversations

In the Conversations segment we share resources featuring participants in the 2020-2021 ZORA! Festival Afrofuturism Conference.

This week’s featured Conversation is a podcast interview with poet, fiction writer, and former professional chess player Iheoma Nwachukwu, a participant in the Afrofuturism Writers’ Pavilion at the 2020 ZORA! Festival.

Dr. Nwachukwu is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Scranton. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, under the repressive military regimes of Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, and Sani Abacha, partaking in democracy riots from a young age. After working as a Chinese herbal medicine salesman for a few years while writing, he won a fellowship to come to the US for graduate school. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Texas and a Ph.D. in Fiction from Florida State University.

Dr. Nwachuku has won fellowships from the Chinua Achebe Center for Writers at Bard College, and the Michener Center for Writers in Austin. His fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, Kwani, Internazionale, and elsewhere. His fiction has earned a Pushcart Prize Special mention and a Best American Short Stories Notable mention.

This interview was conducted by Kimberly Williams, a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Florida, during the ZORA! Festival Afrofuturism Conference on Jan. 30, 2020. It lasts about 30 minutes.

You can find the interview here.

Explorations

In the Explorations segment we pose a series of questions for further investigation and class discussion, based on the featured Conversation. As you listen to the podcast interview, consider the following questions:

• Dr. Nwachukwu grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. How does he see his work drawing and expanding on Igbo Nigerian culture through the realm of speculative fiction?
• Dr. Nwachukwu discusses the critique of Afrofuturism among some African literary scholars and critics. How does he characterize and respond to that critique?
• Dr. Nwachukwu stresses the importance of Afrofuturism to black youth. Why does he think films like Black Panther are vital?
• How does Dr. Nwachukwu define Afrofuturism? What, in his view, does Afrofuturism offer society at this moment?
• Dr. Nwachukwu sees elements of Afrofuturism in Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic studies. How so?

References

Authors, artists, and works referenced in the podcast include:

• Star Trek
• Doctor Who
• Superman
• Marvel’s Luke Cage (2016)
• Black Panther (2018)
• Bill Campbell / Rosarium Publishing
• Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017)
• Janelle Monáe
• C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)

Up next: Dr. Julian Chambliss’s Spotify Playlist on The Sound of Afrofuturism: Mapping the Sonic Imagination.