This guide was created as part of Spring 2020' s Future Tense: Imagined Worlds from the Margins focus topic.
Afrofuturism, coined in Mark Dery’s “Black to the Future” essay in 1993, sought to encapsulate and explore commonalities and confluences among music, visual art, and writing by black creators. Melding the African diaspora with technology and science fiction themes, Afrofuturism has earlier roots in mid-20th century music, most notably Sun-Ra, whose mix of African culture and space age inspired sound influenced later musicians and artists, as well as writings from the Black Speculative Arts movement and mid-century science fiction. Re-imagining a future flush with art, science and technology through a black lens, Afrofuturism often explores themes of alien or “otherness”, utopian ideologies, the digital divide, feminism, the grotesque, and reclamation of culture.
Afrofuturism by 
Dark Matter by 
