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This dissertation examines the African science fiction genre also known as Africanfuturism. It assesses distinguishing features of the genre, highlighting connections between Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism. This study interrogates Nnedi Okorafor’s coinage and definition of Africanfuturism by exploring her critical works as well as her literary oeuvre with a view to understanding the uniqueness of the genre. A close reading of Okorafor’s texts along with other prominent Africanfuturist authors reveals that both genres are inherently different but there are points of convergence. As a result of this, I explore Pan-africanfuturism as an inclusive genre with the potential of embracing all forms of Black futures. In each chapter, I contrast Okorafor’s work with a different science fiction author to illustrate how diverse the interpretations of Africanfuturist visions are.

Using queer and Afrofuturist frameworks, this Black feminist qualitative study explored queer Black pre-and in-service teachers' cultural and intersectional practices as they navigated traditional heteronormative educational spaces. This research study relied on counternarratives and storytelling and drew from Afrofuturism to understand the use of their lived experiences to counter monolithic queer narratives. The queer Black teachers in this study examined and negotiated how their Blackness and queerness showed up in teacher preparation programs (TPP) and K-12 classrooms. Moreover, they eventually refused to hide or censure their authentic selves. An analysis of the narratives and counternarratives showed that queer Black teachers drew from ancestral traditions to create queer Afrofuturist spaces in TPPs and educational places. Furthermore, due to their queer Black intersectional approaches, their classrooms, assignments, curriculum, and pedagogy disrupted normative teaching practices. Implications, recommendations, and future research are discussed.

My dissertation examines four Black speculative novels from the turn of the twentieth century, published between 1892-1904. Texts from this tradition tend to be grouped under an umbrella of “proto-Afrofuturism” or “proto-science fiction” and considered as early, surprising instances of a speculative mode that would only fully emerge several decades later. This categorization, while accurate in some respects, flattens out the diversity of the Black speculative imagination at the turn of the century. Therefore, I prioritize demonstrating the uniqueness of each author’s vision. At the same time, I argue that these texts share a fundamental similarity in their approach: they anticipate Arthur Schomburg’s famous injunction that the “Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” They use the affordances of the speculative mode to experiment with a shared Black history and explore the possibilities and limitations of that history for a viable and desirable Black future. The authors that I examine challenge the conclusions of racial science that were used to justify a racially stratified society. In doing so, these authors speculate about the imminent future of Black Americans. But even though the perspective of these texts is the imminent future, their central preoccupation is actually Black history. Each of these texts experiment with a different possible shared history with which Black Americans can anchor a collective political identity. This approach is in distinct contrast to the typical approach of turn of the century utopian texts. If we can say axiomatically that white utopian texts, though they often extrapolate and project a distant future, actually function to estrange the present moment; then we can say, in contrast, that Black utopian texts from this era, although they are concerned about an imminent future, more fundamentally estrange the past. / English

Br(others) Only conceptualizes the wall sculptures of Rashid Johnson as free-standing “altars” that play with different and sometimes divergent brands of black masculinity and classed homosociality. Primarily, I analyze three of Johnson’s sculptures from the late 2000s: I Who Have Nothing (2008); I’m Still in Love with You (2008); and Souls of Black Folk (2010). I argue that, by invoking the history of black renaissance men, gentlemen scholars, and entertainers, Johnson’s work plays with various kinds of black masculinity and homosociality that simultaneously straddle the past and future. By doing so, his art not only enacts a racialized temporality, but it also chips away at monolithic notions of black masculinity by fabricating contradictory amalgams of race, class, and gender. For my analysis of Johnson’s artworks, I utilize Cassandra Jackson’s Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (2010) as the chief framework for conceptualizing the waxy coats of Johnson’s sculptures as wounded bodies in an effort to “flesh out” the vulnerability of black men. Theorizing the putrescent surfaces of Johnson’s sculptures as violable bodies allows me to consider the ruptures between seemingly impenetrable black masculinity and the always-present vulnerability of the black male body to violence. / text

Ce mémoire explore les liens intertextuels existants entre les féminismes noirs et les œuvres afrofuturistes Metropolis de Janelle Monáe et Pumzi de Wanari Kahiu. Une revue de la littérature a permis de montrer que des personnages incarnés par des femmes noires dans des rôles principaux sont peu présents dans le genre cinématographique de la science-fiction, mais qu’ils tiennent une place centrale dans l’afrofuturisme. Cette recherche s’interroge ainsi sur le manque de représentation des femmes noires dans la science-fiction et offre une étude de l’évolution du courant afrofuturiste, de ses modalités intermédiales, et des conséquences de sa récente popularisation. Cette recherche propose donc une analyse textuelle de Pumzi et de Metropolis et une exploration de l’interaction de ces deux objets culturels avec les courants féministes noirs en relation avec le principe de l’intertextualité. Il émerge de cette analyse une étude sur la récente marchandisation et édulcoration subséquente des motivations sociales radicales du courant afrofuturiste, entraînant un questionnement sur les possibilités d’une redéfinition. / This thesis explores the intertextual links between black feminism and the afrofuturist works Metropolis by Janelle Monae and Pumzi by Wanari Kahiu. A literature review showed that characters played by black women in protagonist roles had a minimal presence in the cinematic genre of science fiction but that they had a central place in afrofuturism. This research interrogates black women lack of representation in science fiction and futurism and studies the evolution of the afrofuturist movement, its intermediality and the consequences of its recent popularization. This research proposes a textual analysis of Pumzi and Metropolis and an exploration of the interaction between those two cultural objects and black feminism movements in relation with the concept of intertextuality. Out of this investigation emerges a study of the recent commodification of the afrofuturist movement and the subsequent weakening of its radical and social motivations, leading to a questioning on the possibility of a redefinition.

Set in an imagined pre-colonial/ medieval southern African kingdom, A Smoke that Thunders or Godtouched is an epic fantasy novel that tracks the lives of three magical Black girls taking on the gods and the patriarchy.

This qualitative arts-based narrative inquiry explored and analyzed the experiences of five Black women dance educators who teach with micro-interventions of care, love, and mentorship toward racial uplift in Black youth. This inquiry’s data collection included participants’ journal entries, sent weekly via email; one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with the women; and roundtable sista’ circles convened within community dialogues. Participants were prompted to share stories of their lived experiences as community members, artists, educators, and scholars. The collected data was analyzed using thematic and narrative methods, beginning with deductive coding and continuing with chunked comparisons of the women’s narratives. This study’s findings revealed that the women’s narratives as educators, persons, and community leaders, centered Blackness, care and love for themselves and their community, and Afrofuturity extant in their dance education practices. The narratives themselves revealed anecdotes of community, artistry, spirituality, culture, and healing, told and retold in the form of storytelling and poetry. This study sheds light on the unique experiences and perspectives of Black women dance educators, highlighting the importance of their contributions to the field. This study also proposes future considerations for research and practice in unearthing more stories of dance education as a micro-intervention of care, love, and mentorship toward racial uplift in Black youth. The inquiry and its results hold ramifications for and suggest a new vision for Black youth as well as educators that is a joyful Afrofuturistic dance education praxis rooted in peace, love, harmony, and #JOY.

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