AARI2018/19
Afrofuturism
Want to be part of next year’s African American Read-In team? Enroll in the African American Read-In Engaged Learning course! This course enables students to study African American literature, culture, history and the arts in connection with an annual public, two-day event.
The 2018/19 theme will be Afrofuturism. What happens when African American writers imagine alternate histories, (im)possible futures, other dimensions, species, galaxies, and worlds? What happens when the stories they tell are the stories of Black people—male, female, and other-gendered—who are the heroes, explorers, architects, interpreters of these worlds? Students will study speculative works by Black authors in all genres that push the boundaries of the real in order to re-imagine the possible, from folk tales to conjure stories to magic realism to science fiction. This longstanding and robust tradition is centered on critiquing intersecting ideologies of race, gender, class, and sexuality as well as envisioning new opportunities for identity and social justice.
In the fall semester, students will explore, discover, and study a range of literary works in addition to music, visual art, and film clips that relate to the theme, then collaborate with classmates to create creative or academic projects to present at the 2019 Read-In in February. Projects may take a range of forms–film, performance, music composition, research/ scholarship, creative writing–depending upon the unique interests and talents students bring to the course. In the spring semester, students will
take part in shaping, promoting, and delivering the 2-day African American Read-In at Penn State Altoona, which includes a children’s program, a community dinner program for Altoona area residents, visiting authors and speakers, and the famous day-long Monday Marathon, at which they will also present their final projects.
ENGL/INART/AFAM 141N (GH/GA/US/integrative, inter-domain)
Concurrent with ENGL/INART 497 (instructor sign-in only for 497 level)
2 credits in the fall; 1 credit in the spring (spring course only 5 weeks)
Tuesday & Thursday 1:35-2:40; taught by Dr. Megan Simpson, mbs12@psu.edu