{"id":23,"date":"2026-06-01T00:58:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T00:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2026-06-01T00:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T00:58:30","slug":"keynote-speakers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/keynote-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Keynote Speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, November 13, 2026, 6:30-8:00 PM <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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Alex Zamalin<\/b> (<\/span>Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science and chair of Africana Studies, Rutgers University\u2014New Brunswick)<\/span>\u00a0is the author of numerous books including Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism <\/i><\/span><\/a>(Columbia University Press, 2019) which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Title by the American Library Association, his timely Antiracism: An Introduction <\/i><\/a>(NYU Press, 2019), and his most recent Counterculture: The Story of America From Bohemia to Hip-Hop <\/i><\/span><\/a>(Beacon, 2025).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Saturday, November 14, 2026, 6:30-8:00 PM <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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Tavia<\/b> Nyong\u2019o<\/strong> (<\/span>William Lampson Professor of American Studies; Black Studies; Performance Studies; and Women\u2019s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Yale University) <\/span>studies Black queer performance, speculative aesthetics, and affective historiography. He is the author of several volumes including Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life <\/i><\/span><\/a>(New York University Press, 2018), and Black Apocalypse: Afrofuturism at the End of the World <\/span><\/em><\/a>(University of California Press, 2025), which reframes the binary of afropessimism and afrofuturism to explore Black speculative thought at the edge of planetary crisis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, November 13, 2026, 6:30-8:00 PM Alex Zamalin (Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science and chair of Africana Studies, Rutgers University\u2014New Brunswick)\u00a0is the author of numerous books including Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (Columbia University Press, 2019) which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Title by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2448,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/conference2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}