About this item
Highlights
- A Black dancer chronicles her career as a scholar writing the stories of global hip-hop and Black culture Dancing the Afrofuture is the story of a dancer with a long career of artistry and activism who transitioned from performing Black dance to writing it into history as a Black studies scholar.
- Author(s): Halifu Osumare
- 336 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts
Description
About the Book
In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on how her career as a dancer and activist influenced her growth as a scholar writing the stories of global hip-hop and Black culture.Book Synopsis
A Black dancer chronicles her career as a scholar writing the stories of global hip-hop and Black culture
Dancing the Afrofuture is the story of a dancer with a long career of artistry and activism who transitioned from performing Black dance to writing it into history as a Black studies scholar. Following the personal journey of her artistic development told in Dancing in Blackness, Halifu Osumare now reflects on how that first career--which began during the 1960s Black Arts Movement--has influenced her growth as an academic, tracing her teaching and research against a political and cultural backdrop that extends to the twenty-first century with Black Lives Matter and a potent speculative Afrofuture.
Osumare describes her decision to step away from full-time involvement in dance and community activism to earn a doctorate in American studies from the University of Hawai'i. She emulated the model of her mentor Katherine Dunham by studying and performing hula, and her research on hip-hop youth culture took her from Hawai'i to Africa, Europe, and South America as a professor at the University of California, Davis. Throughout her scholarly career, Osumare has illuminated the resilience of African-descendant peoples through a focus on performance and the lens of Afrofuturism.
Respected for her work as both professional dancer and trailblazing academic, Osumare shares experiences from her second career that show the potential of scholarship in revealing and documenting underrecognized stories of Black dance and global pop culture. In this memoir, Osumare dances across several fields of study while ruminating on how the Black past reveals itself in the Afro-present that is transforming into the Afrofuture.
Review Quotes
"Osumare gives readers a deeply personal look into her world
as a dancer, choreographer, scholar, professor, activist, and all-around
powerhouse. . . . Part self-reflection and part love song to Dunham, this book
is a triumphant look at a dancer's second act as a scholar."--Library
Journal