This theme engages with the emerging field of Afrofuturist Studies from an Africological perspective and seeks to build upon the scholarship published between 2015 and 2021 in Obsidian’s Speculating Futures: Black Imaginations and the Arts (2019), Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness (2017), The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity (2019), Art+Design, Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations (2021), When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity (2020), and in a body of scholarship and artistic cultural production that has established Afrofuturist studies as an emerging field. Furthermore, building on the thesis presented in the introduction of the Afrofuturism 2.0 volume, we continue to argue that contemporary Black Speculative thought or Afrofuturism is directly linked or adjacent to the formation of modern Black Studies. The monograph situates the emerging field of Afrofuturist studies within and in conversation with the field of Africology and/or African American Studies. Finally, this series of essays, using the Afrofuturism 2.0 framework, looks at contemporary Afrofuturism within a Africological, transgenerational standpoint to explore philosophy, religion, existential threats, aesthetics, and politics of Black and/or African futurity.
Topics of Interest include, but are not limited to the following:
- Afropessimism and Afrofuturism
- African Futurism and Afrofuturism 2.0
- Afrofuturist Feminism
- The Afrocentric paradigm and Afrofuturism 2.0
- Transfuturism
- Queer Afrofuturism
- Afrofuturism 2.0 and climate-change
- Afrofuturism 2.0 and Futures Forecasting
- Afrofuturism, Acceleration and Augmentation
- Afrofuturism and religion (ie. African Traditional Religion or Diaspora, Christianity, or Islam)
- Afrofuturism 2.0 and A.I.
- Afrofuturism 2.0, Geoculture and Geopolitics
Deadlines
Full submissions are due no later than May 15th 2022 and must be submitted using the ‘Submit an article’ tab here. Publication is slated for summer/fall 2023.
Guidelines
Submission guidelines can be found here. To avoid your submission being delayed or rejected, please adhere to the formatting guidelines and ensure that permissions to use third-party material (see guidelines) are secured prior to submission.
Guest editor:
Reynaldo Anderson, Ph.D. Temple University
