Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship
Wednesday, February 12, 2025, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
James B. Hunt Jr. Library
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
We celebrate the experiences and the wisdom embedded in our everyday lives, recognizing that community knowledge, ancestral knowledge, and personal knowledge is a profound form of research.
We invite you to explore how identity, scholarship, culture, creative work, and research manifest in our daily interactions from the burbs to the bayous, from the trenches to the trailer parks, from the boardroom to the living room, and from the Jack and Jill’s to our metaphorical kitchen table. This symposium aims to disrupt/challenge how we define research by highlighting the stories that emerge from the familiar spaces of Afro-diasporic ways of knowing.
By embracing and uplifting these familiar stories, we affirm that no experience disqualifies one from being a researcher; instead, these varied perspectives enrich our collective understanding and push the boundaries of conventional scholarship.
Join us at our metaphorical kitchen table, where everyday experiences become transformative praxis and we uplift Storytelling from the Familiar.
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.”
Zora Neale Hurston
Dust Tracks on the Road (1942)
Call for Digital Poster Proposals
Our call for proposals is now closed, but we are still accepting digital posters proposals. Digital poster proposals are due by January 20, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. EST.
Volunteer Sign Up
If you are interested in volunteering for the Symposium on Afrofuturism and Diasporic Scholarship, please fill out our Call for Volunteers interest form.
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.
Keynote Speaker: Dasan Ahanu
Poet, Emcee, Cultural Organizer, Playwright, Performance Artist, Lecturer, Educator
A self-described introvert with a very public profession, Dasan Ahanu is an award-winning poet, cultural organizer, performing artist, and scholar. He is a Southern storyteller who uses stories to deepen our understanding and awareness of what’s happening around us. Dasan is a visiting lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill, an alumnus of Harvard University’s Nasir Jones Fellowship, and North Carolina’s 2023 Piedmont Laureate for poetry. He notes that creative artistry is embedded in the fabric of North Carolina and shows an incredible commitment to his home state. He has served various artistic leadership roles and consistently reinvests his talents. A respected recording artist, Dasan has collaborated with many Jazz, Soul, and Hip-Hop artists in North Carolina. He has published extensively, performed nationwide, and authored six poetry collections. Dasan has been active in poetry slam, participating in regional and national competitions as a founding member and coach of the Bull City Slam Team. He is a builder who works with organizations and institutions to develop effective arts strategies that enhance their work in the community.
Resume Highlights
- Alumni Nasir Jones Fellow – Hip Hop Archive at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Harvard University
- Resident Artist – St. Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center
- Managing Director – Black Poetry Theatre
- Member – Black Jedi Zulus
- Founder/Coordinator/Coach – Jambalaya Soul Slam/Bull City Slam Team
Find Dasan on Campus
Dasan is NC State LIVE’s 2024-25 Artist-In-Residence, engaging the campus in his creative research process while he develops a new work of theatre called Saints & Aints, which will have its world premiere in Hunt Library on March 28 and 29.
Saints & Aints is a performance project centered on the poetry of Dasan Ahanu. Inspired by Black Southern practices, Saints & Aints is a welcoming call for creative fellowship. Part Sunday service reinterpretation, part juke joint reimagining, and part underground dance club escapism, this work invites the audience into a communal celebration of life, faith, resiliency and Black joy.
This work was written by Ahanu as a reminder that, with the right lens, holy words, doctrines and scripture can apply to everyone. Complete with a hip hop choir, live beats and spiritual samples, this happening will give attendees an opportunity to envision this possibility, to hold space in new ways, and to turn art into a joyful noise. As a connection to Ahanu’s literary background, the new work will premiere in the cutting-edge James B. Hunt Jr. Library – a place where Dasan often sits to write his poetry.
During the development process for Saints & Aints, Dasan will engage our community with a spoken word workshop, a lecture demonstration about his creative process, and a post-show conversation after the world premiere of Saints & Aints. These educational opportunities provide participants with a behind-the-scenes look into the creative process. In addition, participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and talk to the artists in a more intimate setting. These events offer our students (many from rural parts of the state) the opportunity to “see themselves” in an artist working at the highest level and develop a deep connection to African American traditions. The residency also gives workshop participants and audiences the chance to explore Black Southern practices, poetry, and theatre through an intergenerational lens.
Symposium Guiding Principles
The symposium will embrace and reflect the following guiding principles. Please download the Grounding Document to learn more.
- 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
