Welcome to Week 20 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 and topics from the 2020-2021 ZORA! Festival Afrofuturism Conference.

This week's Conversation features the exhibition catalog for the exhibit "A Past Unremembered: The Transformative Legacy of the Black Speculative Imagination," co-curated by Dr. Julian Chambliss and Dr. Phillip Cunningham. The exhibit locates Afrofuturist thought in earlier eras of American history and focuses on how African American writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries used speculative/science fiction to imagine a better, freer, more equitable future for Black people.

You can find the exhibit here.

References

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

• Martin R. Delany’s Blake; or, The Huts of America (1859-1862)
• Pauline E. Hopkins's serialized novel, Of One Blood (1903)
• W.E.B. DuBois's short story, "The Comet," in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920)
• Roger Sherman Tracy's novel, The White Man's Burden: A Satirical Forecast (1915)
• George S. Schuyler's novel, Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Works of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D., 1933-1940 (1931)
• George S. Schuyler's novel, Black Empire (1936)

Up next: A lecture from Afrofuturist musician Sun Ra.