Priscilla Layne

At the American Academy, Layne plans to complete work on her second book, Out of this World: Afro-German Afrofuturism, under contract with Northwestern University Press. In this project, she focuses on Afro-German authors’ use of Afrofuturist concepts in literature and theater. Coined by cultural critic Mark Dery in 1994, the term Afrofuturism describes African diasporic artists’ engagement with science, science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. From the poetry of Philipp Khabo Köpsell to the plays of Olivia Wenzel and Simone Dede Ayivi, Afro-German artists have increasingly engaged with Afrofuturism in order to critique Eurocentricism, uncover German racism, rewrite the past, and imagine a more positive future for black peoples. Apart from a few analyses of poet May Ayim’s work, Black German Studies has largely been dominated by discussions of autobiographies. With Out of this World, Layne makes two interventions in the field: first, to focus on fictional texts by a variety of authors and, second, to examine texts by a younger generation of Afro-German artists who have turned away from the mode of autobiography and the need to claim a German identity. Layne asks, “What is it about Afrofuturism that appeals to contemporary Afro-German authors in particular, and what kinds of interventions might these authors be trying to make into the Afro-German archive and into the German discourse on race?” Her title, Out of this World, refers to the Afrofuturist interest in inventing—both finding and creating—a world free of white supremacy and racism that is safe for black peoples.