The Dreamer and the Dream
Afrofuturism and Prophetic Visions of Blackness

Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

10:00am-11:30am

Haines Hall 215

A talk by Dr. Roger Sneed: Afrofuturism as a way of Black people expressing their identity through speculative fictions is fairly new, and yet it is not new. We can trace the Black use of speculative fiction to articulate visions of Blackness and critique white supremacy back to W.E.B. DuBois’s 1920 short story “The Comet.” However, Afrofuturism has made a resurgence, due in part to the phenomenal success of Black Panther, ongoing interest in the work of Octavia Butler, and the rise of the “blerd” (a portmanteau of “black” and “nerd”). Today’s talk uses an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a focal point for investigating the intersections of Afrofuturism and Black Religious Thought.