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ENGL 3350-Literary Afrofuturism: Introduction to African American Literature-PARKER: What is Afrofuturism? Resources

AFROFVTRVE

AFROFVTVRE" by David Adamu is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Ytasha Womack - Afrofuturism Imagination and Humanity

What is Afrofuturism?

Scholar DeWitt D. Kilgore considers it a way “to imagine futures directed by the survival and even the resurgence of black people and their cultures, experiences, and designs,” and Ytasha L.Womack describes it simply as “…a way of bridging the future and the past…”

This course, “Literary Afrofuturism: Introduction to African American Literature,” explores African American literature from its earliest iterations to the 21st century with Afrofuturism as its guiding light to investigate how African American literature has always been forward-thinking, future-oriented, and visionary. If Literary Afrofuturism is a language, we are going to understand the “grammar” of Literary Afrofuturism, applying concepts and terminology to African American literary works. We will consider the varied ways Black American writers have always been concerned with creating new, alternative worlds through terminology and concepts. Throughout the semester, we will grapple with different understandings of Afrofuturism to read, situate, and interrogate Black American writers’ works.

Learning Objectives

Course Learning Outcomes

At the completion of this course, you should be able to

  1. define and identify the literary elements in African American literary works
  2. define and identify examples of particular terms related to our study of Afrofuturism and African American literature
  3. define and identify the 4 goals that surround our study of African American literature
  4. Understand the conventions and genres of the traditional literature of the time and observe African American authors’ appropriation of these conventions/genres
  5. Create a well-developed final project that (A) uses discipline-specific vocabulary and analytic techniques; (B) situates and interprets Afrofuturist literature alongside other Afrofuturist mediums

Afrofuturism Background

Subjects: Africana Studies