In this Seeking Futures panel, scholars discuss the complex legacy of Afrofuturism and its intersections with Weimar Germany and the broader Modernist movement of the early 20th century.
Participants
Julian Chambliss
Julian C. Chambliss is a Professor of English and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. His research focuses on race, culture, and power in real and imagined spaces. His engagement with Afrofuturism sketches from comics to community activism informed by Black digital humanities and Critical Afrofuturist frameworks.
Stacey Robinson
Stacey A. Robinson, MFA, born in Albany, New York, is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The influence of science fiction, Black liberation politics, and comic books fuel Stacey’s multimedia practice.
Kinitra Brooks
Kinitra Brooks is the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies in the Department of English at Michigan State University and the Director of Graduate Programs in English. Dr. Brooks specializes in the study of black women, genre fiction, and popular culture, as seen in past columns for The Root on “The Safe Negro Guide to Lovecraft Country” and her multiple visits as a commentator on NPR’s 1A.
Josh Lam
Joshua Lam’s primary research and teaching interests include modernism, African American literature, and twentieth-century and contemporary U.S. literature and culture. Additional interests include critical race theory, science and technology studies, theories of habit and attention, and popular culture (comedy, horror, SFF).
Suggested Reading
Aldon Morris, The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology, First edition (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2015).
Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South, Reprint edition (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).