Time-Sensitive: Teaching Afrofuturism Through the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

"Time-Sensitive: Teaching Afrofuturism Through the Nineteenth Century" describes a strategy of teaching Afrofuturism that exposes its long and ongoing history. Borrowing from Tavia Nyong'o's anarchaeological historical methodologies, this essay argues that teaching literary history in a non-linear way disrupts students' sense that they exist outside of--that is, at the end of--historical time, inviting students to see themselves as acting within a yet-uncertain, always-developing future and linking in-class instruction to political praxis.