Reimagining Black Futures: The Critical Visions of Afrofuturism
Howard University
Organization: Graduate English Student Association (GESA)
Reimagining Black Futures: The Critical Visions of Afrofuturism
In 2025, with emerging AI, Facetime, and robot companions, we acknowledge that the future has arrived and still remains to be explored. We invite scholars, artists, and critical theorists to contribute to our annual conference celebrating Afrofuturism and the work of Gregory J. Hampton. Hampton explored how Black writers engage with identity, power, and possibility. His work has significantly shaped modern views of Black speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and African American literary studies. Hampton's critical analyses of authors like Octavia Butler and Samuel R. Delany, along with his insights into Black subjectivity in science fiction, sparked new conversations across literary criticism, Black studies, and cultural theory. Our conference will continue to build upon his scholarship, which pushed traditional boundaries and opened fresh perspectives on Black embodiment, futurity, and imagination. We invite dialogue to further enrich the field and his work, and we suggested topics to include, (but that are not limited to):
- Intersections of race, gender, and futurism in Black speculative fiction
- Afrofuturism as critical practice in the Black Diaspora
- Queer Black identity in speculative literature
- The evolution of Black subjectivity in science fiction narratives
Political imagination and resistance in the Black fantastic - Comparative analyses between major Afrofuturist theorists (e.g., Gregory J. Hampton, Kodwo Eshun, Alondra Nelson, Ytasha Womack)
- Pedagogical applications of Afrofuturism in literature and cultural studies classrooms
- Creative or artistic responses inspired by Afrofuturism
We welcome interdisciplinary submissions and are especially interested in work by emerging scholars, graduate students, and independent researchers.
gesasecratary@gmail.com