Escape Velocity 2017

Afrofuturism can be characterized as an artistic movement - one that attempts to discover, recover, and reinvent the film, literature, and graphic art created by African-Americans and other Afro-diaspora peoples across the globe. Most fundamentally, literary Afrofuturism attempts to imagine a future in which black peoples and cultures have found a voice and gained visibility alongside or apart from traditional Eurocentric themes and traditions, which both respects the legacy of African-American and Afro-diaspora peoples and attempts to break free of the stereotypes and historical injustices that define so much of modern race-related thinking. This marriage of African-American literature and SF yields interesting discourses on race, gender, technology, and the face of the future. Scholars will discuss Afrofuturist literature, its legacy, its ethos, and its most pressing questions.