African-American Literature: Africanfuturism

"Out of Africa always something new," said Pliny the Elder. That might have been the first definition of Africanfuturism. But it also implies something that Africanfuturism fights against: the West's denial of Africa's rich history. Africanfuturism is speculative science fiction and art that reanimates African history and a future that is both prior to, and beyond, the ethnographic gaze, colonial "race science," European technocracy, and Western utopianism. The course tracks the emergence of Africanfuturism in literature from Amos Tutuola to Nnedi Okorafor, and in graphic novels, film, sculpture, collage, and political manifestos.