Jacobs Presents at Celebrating African American Literature and Language Conference

Posted November 17, 2016

Bethany Jacobs, a postdoctoral Brittain Fellow in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, presented at the Celebrating African American Literature and Language (CAALL) conference at Penn State University on October 28 and 29, 2016.

Jacobs presented her paper, “Playing with Authenticity in the Afrofuturist Albums of Janelle Monáe,” and discussed her success teaching Monáe’s albums in her black science fiction course at Georgia Tech. Her students have placed Monáe in conversation with the Georgia Tech Science Fiction Archives, campus events like “Afrofuturism and Environmental Justice,” and community events like the Atlanta Sci-Fi Film Festival. In her paper, Jacobs argued that Monáe’s albums compel a nuanced exploration of how the past, present, and future converge in black science fiction.   

The 2016 CAALL conference was organized by Penn State’s Africana Research Center, and it focused on the long tradition of “Race and Resistance” in African-American literature and language practices.

Learn more about the conference here: http://arc.psu.edu/caal2016