Black Utopias to Be Focus of New Honors College Signature Seminar

Artwork by David Alabo

Caree Banton will discuss fiction, music and art that offer African Americans "radical hope" for a brighter future.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Black Panther, released in 2018, captivated the imagination of millions, encouraging and reminding us to imagine a world free of oppression and full of Black empowerment. However, utopias like T’Challa’s Wakanda have existed in the Black imagination for centuries. It is the focus of a new public lecture, “Black Utopias,” that will be presented by the University of Arkansas Honors College.

Caree Banton, director of the African and African American Studies Program and associate professor of history in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, will engage the various ways in which Black people have sought to envision and create a better world in the public lecture, which will be offered online via Zoom at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 10.

Banton’s lecture will be a preview to the fall 2021 Honors College Signature Seminar, Black Utopias. Please fill out this online interest form to gain access to the lecture.

“The experiences of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and other efforts geared towards dehumanizing black people, including lynching, Jim Crow, mass imprisonment, … whenever you see experiences of dystopia,” Banton said, “we see utopian ideas emerge as a kind of radical act, a kind of philosophical speculation and deliberation over the meaning of what freedom is, what liberty is, what citizenship is, and nationhood as a way to stretch and expand the current meanings.”

Utopian desires drove the formation of early maroon communities in Brazil, Surinam, Jamaica and the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina; emigration movements to Haiti, Liberia and Canada; and the creation of black communities such as the Gullahs and Geechees and towns in Oklahoma, Mississippi and Florida.

Even though utopian ideals are viewed as impractical and futile, “it becomes critical for people under certain kinds of circumstances to completely rethink and imagine justice, human potential, and scientific and technological alternatives to their current condition,” Banton said.

Dystopian inspiration

Much of the Black experience, both nationally and internationally, has been wrapped up and influenced in oppression, a real-life dystopia. The early presence of chattel slavery led to the African Diaspora and evolved into the racial terror and mass incarceration that we still see today. From Negro spirituals to jazz to Afro-futurism, however, Black societies have never given up hope.

“Once you get that context and background, you come to think about what they are imagining and how they are imagining it in radical ways,” Banton said. Black nationalist thinkers in the U.S., the Caribbean and Africa at different points envisioned in great detail the ideals of a perfect Black society that would shield them from the perils of white supremacist and racist oppression.

“By utilizing the idea of the utopia, you are expanding the terrain of human thinking and the purview of what is possible,” Banton said.

Radical Hope

Visions of a more perfect world have a long history in Black culture. African American spirituals spoke of life on the other side of Jordan, and even the imagination of Frederick Douglass inspired us to consider an abolitionist society.

“It’s out of this kind of radical hope that abolitionist movements emerged,” said Banton. “It was this radical hope born out of utopian ideas that eventually overthrew the system of slavery.”

Black utopias are pervasive throughout our culture. Banton points out that utopian ideas transcend time as well as space and we might find them if we look closely at our historical, political, cultural and artistic landscape.

Composer Sun Ra was among the first musicians to explore utopian ideals with his “Space is the Place” album. This was followed by Parliament Funkadelic’s mothership, “where they could find themselves in a new place beyond white control, white supremacy and racism.” Musicians such as OutKast, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and Andre 3000 continue to reflect artistic ideas about overcoming the travails of an oppressive white supremacist society. Writers such as Octavia Butler and Junot Díaz have also asked us, through the work of speculative fiction, to imagine an alternative.

Films such as Black Panther and recent national reckonings have further solidified the importance of seizing this hope even amid the continuous suffering and oppression present today.

“Young people already have some familiarity with Black utopian desires,” said Banton. “They are reading science fiction, listening to music with Afro-futuristic themes, and thinking about what it means to be Black in America today, and the possibilities for escape.”

Banton studies the African diaspora history and teaches classes in Caribbean history, African diaspora history and race. She is a member of the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy and has been named a Master Teacher in Fulbright College.

Her research focuses on movements around abolition, emancipation and colonization as well as ideas of citizenship, blackness and nationhood in the 19th century. Her book More Auspicious Shores”: Barbadian Migration to Liberia, Blackness, and the Making of the African Republic, 1865 – 1912, a study that explores continuities and mutabilities in black experiences of freedom, citizenship and nationhood across the Atlantic world, was published by Cambridge University Press in May 2019. She is currently working on a collaborative project with an archaeologist on the materials, objects and architecture that defined the back-to-Africa movement.

Signature Seminars Explore Diverse Topics

Black Utopias is one of three Honors College Signature Seminars scheduled for Fall 2021. Other topics will include:

• Sustainable Cities, to be taught by Noah Billig, associate professor of landscape architecture and planning.
• Conspiracy Theory, to be taught by Ryan Neville-Shepard, assistant professor of communication.

Deans of each college may nominate professors to participate in this program, and those who are selected to teach will become Dean’s Fellows in the Honors College.

Honors students must apply to participate, and those selected will be designated Dean’s Signature Scholars. The course application is posted online on the Signature Seminars web page. The deadline to apply is Wednesday, March 31.

About the Honors College: The University of Arkansas Honors College was established in 2002 and brings together high-achieving undergraduate students and the university’s top professors to share transformative learning experiences. Each year the Honors College awards up to 90 freshman fellowships that provide $72,000 over four years, and more than $1 million in undergraduate research and study abroad grants. The Honors College is nationally recognized for the high caliber of students it admits and graduates. Honors students enjoy small, in-depth classes, and programs are offered in all disciplines, tailored to students’ academic interests, with interdisciplinary collaborations encouraged. Fifty percent of Honors College graduates have studied abroad and 100 percent of them have engaged in mentored research.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among fewer than 3% of colleges and universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.