W&M Featured Events
[PAST EVENT] "The Kids Aren't Alright: Afro-German Afrofuturism and the Fight for Futurity"
Professor Priscilla Layne (UNC Chapel Hill) will present research from her forthcoming book Out of this World: Afro-German Afrofuturism.
The term Afrofuturism was originally coined by white American cultural theorist Mark Dery in the 1990s to retroactively describe the phenomenon of African Americans experimenting with scifi and fantasy to critique racism and imagine liberatory futures. Despite Dery's focus on the US, today we understand that Afrofuturism is a global phenomenon. In this talk, Dr. Layne will describe what makes Afrofuturism such an important mode for Black German artists who implement speculative fiction and scifi in their literary works and dramatic performances. She examines how Afro-German artists have increasingly engaged with Afrofuturism in order to critique Eurocentrism, uncover German racism, rewrite the past, and imagine a more positive future for black peoples.
Priscilla Layne is Associate Professor of German UNC Chapel Hill. Her research draws on postcolonial studies, gender studies and critical race theory to address topics like representations of Blackness in literature and film, rebellion, and the concept of the Other in science fiction/fantasy. She is the author of White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture (University of Michigan Press, 2018) and has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film.
Hosted by German Studies and the Decolonizing Humanities Project