Fantastika - encompassing the Gothic, horror, sci-fi, and speculative fiction - has always been a mode formulated by marginalised voices. The strangeness and dislocation of fantastika allows for articulations of Otherness and difference, where the trauma of racial prejudice recurrently manifests as monsters and hauntings. But Black artists have also used the genre to engage with posthuman concerns or to project utopian political economies. The speculative capacity of Afrofuturism, for instance, provides space for the consideration of alternate worlds where Blackness is framed differently, while the paradigm of Africanfuturism moves beyond the articulation of racial Otherness to the imagining of the possibilities for different ‘becomings’ between humans and nonhumans, and world literatures incorporate folklore and myths from the African diaspora to terrifying effect. This course examines fantastic fiction from around the globe, from the nineteenth century to the present day, in an attempt to define a Black Fantastika.

Topics are likely to include: slavery narratives and the supernatural; intersections between race and gender; postcolonial theory; the Southern Gothic tradition; the posthuman; Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism and utopias/dystopias; and the problematics and politics of representing race. Students can expect to encounter works by Malorie Blackman, Octavia E. Butler, Akwaeke Emezi, Daniel O. Fagunwa, Kojo Laing, Helen Oyeyemi, Nnedi Okorafor, Ta-Nehisi Coates, N. K. Jemisin, Toni Morrison, and Amos Tutuola. We will also consider music albums and filmic representations, including work from Janelle Monáe,  Jordan Peele, and Sun Ra.