This semester we will primarily explore Afrofuturism - a movement and philosophy that uplifts and celebrates spiritualities, technologies, and arts and culture of African Diaspora communities to re-imagine and create radically new worlds - and its African-based articulations of Africanfuturism or Africanjujuism, taking examples from fiction, creative nonfiction, film, the visual and theatrical or performing arts, and Black anthropologies of art and religion. This background will inform and support our work to help develop an exhibit and series of performance events around Afrofuturism with the Seacoast African American Cultural Center (SAACC), Green Acre Bahá’í and other regional arts and culture organizations.

This course reviews the history of race and ancestry in biological anthropology, beginning with the origins of “race science” in the field of anthropology. The foundations of scientific racism will be examined through readings on the forced study, medicalization, and oppression of marginalized groups in the biological sciences. The course is divided temporally, with most focus on the pre-WWII eugenics movement, the subsequent “New Physical Anthropology,” and modern approaches to restorative justice in skeletal study, collection, curation, and repatriation.