Welcome to Week 15 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 webinar by Dr. Regina N. Bradley, Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University and author of Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip Hop South, a collection of short stories.

Using historical, spectral and hip hop-infused fiction, Dr. Bradley explores the issues of race, place, and identity in the post-Civil Rights American South and the intersections of regionalism and Black culture in American society.

Dr. Bradley discusses the cultural significance of hip hop music, with emphasis on the Atlanta based hip hop duo OutKast, André "3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, and how they used hip hop starting in the mid-1990s to expand definitions of southern Blackness and their representations of a consistently evolving performance of race, region and identity.

Dr. Bradley presented the webinar on January 27, 2021 as part of Seminole State College of Florida's 2020-2021 Speaker Series, in partnership with the 2021 ZORA! Festival of the Arts and Humanities. It lasts about 90 minutes. Introductions begin about 6:15 minutes into the video, and Dr. Bradley's talk begins about 13:20 minutes into the video.

You can find the webinar here.

References

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

• OutKast - André "3000" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton

Next week: Dr. Erik Steinskog, Keynote Speaker, 2021 ZORA! Festival Academic Conference, 1/29/2021.