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CS92PROD
Afrofuturism
AFAM 224
Spring 2019 not offered
Crosslisting: ENGL 284

Mainstream readings of the African American literary and cultural canon have tended to emphasize texts with a social realist bent, those that present their audience with a supposedly "authentic" version of the African American experience. However, as cultural critic Greg Tate observes, 20th-century African American literary history includes "huge dollops of fantasy, horror, and science fiction" because, in his view, "Black people live the estrangement that science fiction writers imagine." While Tate's statement perhaps overly generalizes the black experience, there seems to be something to his notion that, in part because of the fact that they were forced to live an often "alienated" experience in America, there has always been a strong element of the speculative in black literary and cultural expression. This course traces this under-examined speculative strain in 20th and 21st-century African American literature, music, film, and visual art, as black artists explore, or speculate, on the possibilities that imagining alternative realities and modes of living open up. The course will focus especially on speculative and Afrofuturist aesthetics as they manifest in hip hop music and culture. We will examine the ways that black artists have employed elements of the speculative genres in order to re-envision the African American past, present, and future--rendering versions of historical African American experience and subjectivity that exceed traditional notions of "authenticity," complicating contemporary regimes of identification, and presenting alternative visions of the futures of blackness.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS AFAM
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: None

Last Updated on NOV-03-2024
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