About the project
Word, Sound and Power: The Lyrical Making of African Diaspora Futures is an interdisciplinary research project that combines perspectives from literary studies, cultural studies and musicology.
We will examine the impact the African Diaspora in the long twentieth century has had on contemporary and expanded definitions of “literature” and “the literary”, as well as its role in establishing and popularising the idea that the aesthetic is political.
The project studies genres such as, for example, but not limited to: jazz poetry, dub poetry, sonnets, punk, soul, funk, blues, spirituals, folk, slam poetry, hip hop, grime, calypso and other new and emerging genres of experimental literature at the intersection of literature and music.
Project aims
The main research question of the project is: How have writers in the Anglophone African Diaspora challenged the distinctions between literature and music in ways that imagine and attempt to create a better future?
The project aims to advance research on "Afrofuturism" by historicising and looking critically at the term. Word, Sound and Power contributes to research on Afrofuturism by showing that there are many different imaginary futures and understandings of futurity to be found in literature from the African Diaspora.
There is also an ideological diversity among writers that have often been overlooked. The project demonstrates this by comparing authors from different decades and regions of the African Diaspora.
Funding
The Research Council of Norway (334606)
Duration
01.07.2023 til 31.12.2026