About the Symposium
The Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship is hosted by the African American Cultural Center (AACC) alongside several key campus partners including the NC State University Libraries, TRIO/McNair Scholars, Interdisciplinary Studies, The College of Natural Resources, The Black Alumni Society and more.
The symposium features diasporic learning, scholarship, and epistemologies through cutting-edge research, storytelling, creative works, discussion circles, and community projects from NC State and the local community. This symposium promotes student success by elevating diasporic scholarship, research, and intellectual rigor.
“The heart of justice is truth-telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be.”
bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions (1999)
2025 Symposium Theme: Storytelling from the Familiar
This year’s theme, “Storytelling from the Familiar”, celebrates the experiences and the wisdom embedded in our everyday lives, recognizing that community knowledge, ancestral knowledge, and personal knowledge are profound forms of research.
Call for Proposals
The Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship is open to everyone. This includes community members, students, faculty from nearby colleges and universities, artists, creatives, entrepreneurs, storytellers, social justice organizations, and more.
We welcome interdisciplinary and multimodal research, community-based projects, and cultural work in various formats, such as presentations, digital posters, workshops, and panels. The symposium will feature presentations, digital posters, community conversations, creative performances, keynote speakers, and networking opportunities.
Proposals are due by December 1, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. EST.
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
Zora Neale Hurston
Dust Tracks on the Road (1942)
Proposal Submission Guidelines
Proposals should include a short program description of no more than 100 words and a full description of no more than 500 words*. Please be sure to complete each step of the proposal form, only complete submission will be considered.
Proposal descriptions should answer the following questions:
- How does your presentation reflect and incorporate the theme of the symposium?
- How does your presentation align with the guiding principles of the symposium?
- What would you do with this amount of time?
- How will you engage the audience?
- What do you want attendees to walk away with?
- Do you have co-presenters or co-panelists?
*Note: digital posters only require a short description.
Additional Resources
- Proposal information sessions on Nov. 14 and 20
- Research Communication Through Storytelling Workshop on Nov. 18
Registration
Registration will open in January 2025. Stay tuned for more details.
All presenters, including facilitators, artists, practitioners, poster presenters, etc., must register for the symposium.
Volunteer Opportunities
If you are interested in volunteering for the Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship, please fill out our Call for Volunteers interest form.
Guiding Principles
The symposium will embrace and reflect the following guiding principles. Please download the Grounding Document to learn more about the symposium.
- Practice Sankofa – learning from the past to build a future.
- Be Futuristic – building on theories of afrofuturism (Womack, 2013), African futurism (Okorafor, 2019; Wabuke, 2020), and astro-Blackness (Anderson & Jones, 2016), these theories imagine a future where Black people do indeed exist, free from white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, extreme capitalism, and the violence of imperial wars. The “work of the imagination” as Robin D. G. Kelley frames it, offers us tools to craft “new visions” in a radical act of worldbuilding (Kelley, 2022).
- Embody Ubuntu – build with and alongside community; increase capacity; honor our interconnectedness; build solidarity.
- Each One Teach One – everyone has knowledge to share; decenter hierarchical power dynamics, center lived experiences and stories; cultivate intergenerational interactions and learning opportunities.
- Foster Harambee – champion mutually supportive and relational ways of engaging with community, be relevant; offer solutions; share resources; ground theory in practice/praxis
- Be Sustainable – create structures and systems that are equitable and just; be good stewards of our resources; build systems and institutions that can be replicated.
- Be Emergent – value transformation, change, creativity, growth, and innovation; center relational ways of being; overstand that the process is just as important as the finished product (“emergent”) (Brown, 2017).
- Rest as Revolution – nurture holistic practices and spirituality; be whole; be authentic.
Questions?
Visit the African American Cultural Center on the third floor of Witherspoon Student Center or contact
