Description: This collection contributes to Afrofuturism studies by focusing on the Black creative experience. Contributors analyze philosophies of utopia, art, music, and histories of visual resistance, and they critique noted works by authors and artists like Octavia Butler, Ralph Elliso...
Brief description: Dr. Reynaldo Anderson currently serves as the Graduate Director and Associate Professor of Africology and African American Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Reynaldo is currently the Executive Director and co-founder of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM), an international network of artists, intellectuals, creatives, and activists. He is the co-editor of the following anthologies and journals, Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness and The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design (2015, 2019), Cosmic Underground: A Grimoire of Black Speculative Discontent (2018), Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures, a special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), and "When is Wakanda: Afrofuturism and Dark Speculative Futurity" (The Journal of Futures Studies, 2019). He is also the author of numerous articles on Africana Studies and Communication studies and helped conceive the joint BSAM and NY LIVE Arts Curating the End of the World online exhibitions (2020-2021). He has presented papers in areas of communications, Africana studies, Afrofuturism, and critical theory in the US and abroad.
Review Quotes:
"This creative and courageous book is the flowering of black imagination and exploration into alternatives to the catastrophic realities of present-day black life. It is part of a great tradition of theory and praxis, thought and action rooted in concrete struggles for black freedom and black joy! As America and much of the world moves toward neo-fascism, Afro-futurism becomes more timely and powerful!" --Cornel West, Harvard University
"Reynaldo Anderson and Clinton R. Fluker have continued a dynamic dance with Afrofuturism, bringing together the giants of the field in a single volume. The authors in this well-anchored volume are the best in the field. Each has made an outstanding contribution to Afrofuturism by rushing quickly into the future. I contend that The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design by virtue of its comprehensive and authorial nature will become the classic in the field." --Molefi Kete Asante, professor and chair, Department of Africology, Temple University, author of The History of Africa