Andrew Erickson // Alternative Worlds: Postapocalyptic Afrofuturism as a Dataset for Critical Analysis

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Research Associate

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Andrew Erickson

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Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden

Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden

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Doctoral project

Working title: Alternative Worlds: Postapocalyptic Afrofuturism as a Dataset for Critical Analysis

Core research areas: American Studies / American Studies, Afrofuturism, Science Fiction and Futures Studies
Supervisors: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Moritz Ingwersen, Prof. Dr. Nicole Waller

Abstract

This project advances the evolving discourse on the construction of worlds through data to privilege a corpus of texts that challenge dominant narratives of progress and consumption. The underlying assumption is that contemporary worlds are unequally threatened by the apocalyptic violence of the end of the world due to climate change and the legacies of colonization and enslavement. Looking at end-of-the-world narratives and world-building provides a dataset that utilizes a speculative literary mode to create scenarios with forward-looking potential. This is the remit of post-apocalyptic narratives and Afrofuturism - a cultural, artistic and speculative movement that explores the entanglements of African diasporic cultures with futuristic technologies and science fiction themes that often problematize dominant narratives while imagining parallel, self-determined and empowered futures for Black individuals and (living) societies. Examples from post-apocalyptic Afrofuturism reveal those parallel worlds that become visible through the exploration of data sets for the purpose of subverting historical and ongoing processes. The examples subvert historical and ongoing processes that shape - and sometimes threaten - worlds. As such, 'post-apocalyptic Afrofuturism' offers the potential to expand notions of technology and the intersections of data, world-making and forms of knowing and being in the world. The epistemological intervention of Afrofuturism allows us to rethink the relationality inherent in the creation of worlds and their knowledge systems through data. The resulting data set offers alternatives (parallels) to the dominant Western models of existence and improves our understanding of the destruction of the world in the past, present and potential future scenarios.

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Edited Volumes

Erickson, Andrew, Margot Brink, Matteo Anastasio, Isabelle Leitloff, and Jan Rhein (eds.). Transnational Literatures and Literary Transfer in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023.

Articles and Book Chapters

Erickson, Andrew. "Refusing American History: Non-participation and Narrative Resistance in Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Water Dancer." Participation in American Culture and Society, edited by Philipp Löffler, Natalie Rauscher, and Welf Werner, Heidelberg: Winter, 2024, American Studies: a Monograph Series.

Erickson, Andrew. "African Diasporic Presence in Postapocalyptic Black SF." Transnational Literatures and Literary Transfer in the 20th and 21st Centuries, edited by Margot Brink, et al, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2023, pp. 137-150.

Erickson, Andrew. "Sister Cities." City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology, edited by Jon K. Lauck and Patrick Hicks, Cleveland, OH: Belt, 2022, pp. 220-223.

Erickson, Andrew. "Revelations of the Millennium: Posthuman Beings and/ in Postapocalyptic Worlds." Apocalyptic Visions in the Anthropocene and the Rise of Climate Fiction, edited by Kübra Baysal, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021, pp. 182-200.

Lectures

University of Potsdam (winter semester 2023)

• Academic Writing
• Seminar, British literature / English studies: "Fiction at Worlds' Ends"

University of Siegen (winter semester 2023, teaching contract)

• Seminar, Cultural Studies: "Protest Movements Across Space and Time"

European University of Flensburg (2020-2022)

BA-Proseminars: Basic courses in literary and cultural studies

• Cultural Studies: American Histories (fall semester 2020, 2021)
• Introduction to Literature (fall semester 2022)

BA proseminars: Advanced courses in the theories and applied analysis of literature and culture

• "US-American Protest Literature" (spring semester 2020)
• "Black American Speculative Fiction (SF)" (spring semester 2021)
• "Postapocalyptic Technologies" (spring semester 2022)

Guest lectures

• "Rehearsing the Past through Afrofuturism," University of Cologne (Cologne, Germany): May 23, 2023.
• "Revealing Apocalypse: Reframing the Promise of Paradise in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones," University of Potsdam (Potsdam, Germany): June 6, 2019.
• "The Human Apocalypse: Seeking the Post/human in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake," University of Potsdam (Potsdam, Germany): June 12, 2017.