Teaching Black History Conference

In 2024, the conference theme is Black to the Future: Afro-futurism as Black History. Join us as we reimagine the world without racism and antiblackness. Our conference work will focus on reconceptualizing the past and present through writing about the future. We will push the boundaries of learning, using our knowledge of the past as commentary for Black people’s future, not one of despair but one that reimagines what it means to be Black in a society that historically was meant for us not to survive.

The conference will be held over three days:
Friday, July 26-27 will be in-person. Sunday, July 28 will be held virtually.

*Note that this year we will not have asynchronous or live stream learning for our virtual attendees.

This year, the conference theme is "Black to the Future: Afro-futurism as Black History." Afrofuturism is seen as a cultural aesthetic combining science-fiction, history, and fantasy to explore and connect the African American experience to their forgotten African ancestry. Others have noted that Afrofuturist imagines a world absent of white supremacist thought and institutional structures hindering and oppressing Black communities. Afrofuturism evaluates the past to create a better present and prepare for a future void of those problematic histories. Afro-futurism is about using science fiction that is fact based to teach about Blackness that diverges from societal understandings about Black people and their history.

Afrofuturism is typically associated with Black science fiction and includes various sub-categories, including cyberpunk (art in futuristic settings focusing on futuristic technology and scientific achievement, think Artificial Intelligence, and cyber culture), Black speculative fiction (futuristic literature focusing on race and the history of race, may also include fantasy and horror), and music such as Afropunk and funk, art, fashion, costumes, and films. Yet, it is history education that ties everything together. To reimagine a safe and free world for Black people, Afrofuturism must use history as its foundation. For many, it is commentary on where we have been. In many ways, it is about teaching us about our history that has been forgotten or ignored.