SOMArts Cultural Center is honored to host the book launch of Dr. Halifu Osumare's Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Duhman Legacy -
https://upf.com/book.asp . Published with the University Press of Florida, the book is forthcoming in February 2024 and will be available for purchase at the event.
The launch features a book reading by Dr. Osumare and performances by PUSH dance company.
Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy is the sequel to Dancing in Blackness, A Memoir (2018). It chronicles the next stage in Halifu Osumare's life and career from dancer-activist to scholar-academic, beginning with her leaving dance and community activism in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area in early 1994 and transitioning to Hawai'i where she earned a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Hawai'i. In the process, she follows her mentor Katherine Dunham's model by studying and performing hula, while researching the effects of hip-hop culture on Hawaiian youth. This unlikely story by a unique dancer-academic leads to Osumare becoming a recognized scholar in the burgeoning field of global Hip-Hop Studies.
Osumare's scholarly career takes her to several continents--back to Africa and Europe, and eventually to South America, as she develops her theory of "connective marginality" explaining the internationalization of hip-hop youth culture. As Osumare climbs the academic ladder, eventually becoming a Full Professor at the University of California, Davis, she illuminates the resilience of African descendant peoples through performance and the trending lens of Afrofuturism. Readers will be fascinated by Osumare's career that "dances" across several fields, from Black dance to global pop culture, while ruminating on how the Black past reveals itself in the Afro-Present that is transforming into the Afrofuture.