Welcome to Week 17 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 keynote talk by Dr. Paul Ortiz, Professor of History and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida and author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (2006) and An African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018).

Dr. Ortiz presented the keynote talk, entitled "Oral History, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Black Freedom Struggle through Storytelling and Song," on January 30, 2021, as the afternoon session of Day 2 of the 2021 ZORA! Festival Academic Conference. The conference was was organized around the theme: "What is the Sound of Afrofuturism?"

The talk and Q&A session last about 90 minutes. Dr. Julian Chambliss begins to introduce Dr. Ortiz about 0:53 minutes into the video, and Dr. Ortiz's talk begins about 3:20 minutes into the video.

You can find the keynote talk here.

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