Black Women Have Already Written The Future
Black Feminist Imagination, Speculative Fiction & the Radical Possibilities of Black Futurism
What happens when Black women are given the authority to imagine what comes next? This signature lecture examines Black futurism through the literary and imaginative traditions of Black women and Black queer writers. Moving across speculative fiction, horror, fantasy, Afrofuturism, and Black feminist thought, Sims considers the future as more than a setting: it is a site of political possibility, memory, refusal, survival, and invention.
Drawing from writers including Octavia E. Butler, Toni Morrison, N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Tananarive Due, Jewelle Gomez, and Rivers Solomon, the lecture asks how speculative storytelling can disrupt inherited narratives about whose lives belong in the future. Sims also brings these texts into conversation with their own practice as a poet and speculative artist, inviting students to consider imagination itself as a cultural methodology.
Best format: 60-minute lecture + Q&A. Also available as a keynote or 90-minute expanded program.
STUDENT OUTCOMES
Recognize Black women's foundational contributions to speculative and futurist traditions.
Examine relationships among race, gender, power, embodiment, memory, and futurity.
Consider speculative storytelling as a tool for critique, survival, and possibility.
Connect literary analysis with contemporary artistic and cultural practice.
