On December 11, 2019, I moderated a panel featuring artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, graphic novelist and comic artist John Jennings, and Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips of Black Quantum Futurism. In conjunction with The NewOnes, will free us, artist Wangechi Mutu’s 2019 facade commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the panelists discussed the aesthetics and philosophy of Afrofuturism, a flourishing cultural movement that combines science fiction, history, and fantasy to explore Black diasporic experience.

View the event details at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 

As part of the 2017 Black Speculative Arts Movement convention (#BSAMFUTURISMO2017) at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, I moderated a panel discussion about the past, present, and future of Afrofuturism beyond its literary roots, the relationship between Blackness and Latinidad, and the critiques and revisions that Afrofuturism has undergone since its emergence as a term in the 1990s. Panel participants include Dr. Reynaldo Anderson who founded the Black Speculative Arts Movement, Mark Dery who coined the term Afrofuturism, and Sheree Renée Thomas who edited Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.

View the full panel discussion on YouTube