Bloodlines on the Leaves: Afrofuturist Storyworlding at the Edge of the End of the World

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Bloodlines on the Leaves is a critical race counterstory (Cook, 2013; Martinez, 2020; Solórzano and Yosso, 2002) set within Octavia Butler’s Parable universe, reflective of the real-world, overlapping crises in this current moment. Bloodlines centers on the case of Professor Mary Kiele’s mysterious disappearance, a Black high-level administrator at a fictional university in Hampton, Virginia. Prof. Kiele’s disappearance incites action from the story’s protagonist, Ms. Victoria B. Wells, a Black community health-worker and suicidologist, renowned for her rigorous psychological autopsies. The narrative unfolds through Victoria’s investigative field notes, memos, and exchanges, demonstrating how higher education continues to function as laboratories of state warfare (Giroux, 2015) and forms of neoliberal counterinsurgency (Rodriguez, 2022; Kelley, 2018), particularly against Black survival and autonomy.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 1: Education and Place, Space, Time

Chair

• Daniel Gilbert Solorzano, University of California - Los Angeles

Papers

• Afrofuturistic Noir - Kenjus T. Watson, American University

• Place and Time in Black Studies - Nina Monet Reynoso, University of Colorado - Colorado Springs

• Critical Fabulation within and Against the Archive - Mary Senyonga, Sacramento State University

Session Organizer

• Mary Senyonga, Sacramento State University

Discussant

• Daniel Gilbert Solorzano, University of California - Los Angeles