Philip Butler (editor) - Critical Black Futures Speculative Theories and Explorations

is Associate Professor of Communications at Harris-Stowe State University. His research focus is in several areas of interest that include urban leadership and organization, intercultural communication, speculative futurism, cultural studies, Africana studies, rhetoric, social media, and the techno-sphere. He coedited Afrofuturism 2.0: The Rise of Astro-Blackness.

teaches religious and theological studies at Iliff School of Theology, is an affiliate professor at Regis University, and is a licensed minister from the historic Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He is a postdoctoral research fellow at The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research deals with the relationship between economic justice and racial equality within the United States, and its transnational range of influence, focusing on the recovery of intellectual resources and economic praxis from the Black Panther Party.

is Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology. He is also the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities. His work primarily focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, technology, spirituality, and race. He is the author of Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Spirituality and Technology.

is Professor of Philosophy and an American scholar and author. He holds a personal chair in Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh. In 2018, he won an American Book Award for The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood.

is an American visual artist who examines personal and shared Black experiences and offers stories that expand how we express notions of gender and race today. Hammie works primarily with themes related to cultural identity, social justice, storytelling, and the body in visual culture. His recent awards include the Puffin Foundation Award (2017) and Arnold O. Beckman Research Award from the University of Illinois (2016).

is an artist from Buffalo, New York. In addition to installation, digital collage, cosplay, and performance work, she is a writer and Afrofuturist storyteller. Howard holds a Juris Doctor from the State University of New York at Buffalo, an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is pursuing an MA in African Studies with a concentration in the Swahili language.

is an artist based in Huffman, Texas. She holds a BFA in Drawing from Texas Southern University and an MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formally a member of the fine arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Martin is working as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. Martins work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently Martins work was included in the State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now.

(she/they) is Assistant Director of Brown Universitys LGBTQ Center. She holds a PhD in African American Studies from the University of Texas, Austin. ONeill was also a Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellow in Lesbian Studies at Yale University in 2016. They were also Assistant Director of the Multicultural Resource Center at Oberlin College, where she earned a certificate in Social Justice Mediation.

is an Arthur Schomburg fellow and has completed his Masters of Fine Art at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is originally from Albany, New York, and graduated from Fayetteville State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree. His art speculates about futures where Black people are free from colonial influences.

work explores representation through themes of adornment, memory, spirituality, and time. She draws inspiration and influence from an eclectic range of time periods, artists, and cultures. She photographed portraits of Coretta Scott King for the book The Many Faces of Sweet Auburn. Her work has been published in Behind the Shutter Magazine as well as Art-Diction Magazine.

is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the City College of New York, CUNY, and a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Scott studied philosophy at New York University and at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition, he earned a masters degree in African American Studies from Columbia University.

Scotts research interests converge on Africana Philosophy and African-American Political and Artistic History. In Africana Philosophy, Scott is engaged in research in the fields of metaphysics, aesthetics, and the history and geography of ideas. His work in metaphysics engages the ontology of personhood via critical examination of the conceptual logic and phenomenology of subjectivity, race, ethnicity, nationality, post-colonialism, humanism and transhumanism. In aesthetics, he explores the value of art arising out of social and political oppression with particular attention to the pragmatics and aesthetics of Black Futurism, especially in science fictional film and electronic music.