Black Speculative Media

Speculative fiction is widely understood as an “umbrella genre” encompassing narratives that depart from, distort, or challenge reality by incorporating fantastical, futuristic, and / or supernatural elements. This course introduces students to a collection of distinctively Black speculative and science fiction media—not as an ethnic “subcategory” of the genre—but rather as independently organized aesthetic genealogies of the Black Radical Tradition. Through readings in Black critical theory, literary studies, media studies, and Black feminist studies to name a few, we will trace aesthetic signifiers of speculation alongside continuing historical legacies of racism, xenophobia, colonization, and ecological extraction. By looking at a variety of media for methods of critical analysis including films, soundscapes, television, literature, theory, and visual art, we will ask what Black speculative aesthetic strategies tell us about the limitations and possibilities that accompany practices of “worlding.