Dystopian Lessons for Today

Hosts Shanté and Tav welcome guest Jayna Brown (Media Studies, Pratt Institute) to discuss Octavia Butler’s Parable series and her forthcoming book, Black&nbsp;Utopias. Recorded via videoconferencing during COVID-19 quarantine. This episode's image contains original book cover artwork by John Jude Palencar.

Butler's Parable Series

Lovecraft Country

For the first episode of season two of Fantastic Blackness, hosts Tav and Shanté discuss Lovecraft Country, and what could have been (and may still be if picked up by another streaming service or network) on Season 2. For show notes, check out the substack: https://fantasticblackness.substack.com/p/spooky-pride-2021-hbos-lovecraft

Spooky Pride

Hosts Shanté and Tav sit down with author Zakiyyah Iman Jackson to break down her new book: Becoming Black: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack&nbsp;World. You can find Professor Jackson's book on her website: <a href="https://www.zakiyyahimanjackson.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.zakiyyahimanjackson.com</a>. Cover art contains artwork from the book's original cover art by Nandipha Mntambo, the piece is called Europa, from&nbsp;2008.

Becoming Human

Pandemic Summer

Hosts Shanté and Tav discuss things Black and Fantastic from within the COVID-19 pandemic and a heightened anti-Black racial pandemic. Our hosts reflect on academia, performative allyship, and share their pandemic playlists and reading&nbsp;lists.

The Fire This Time

Racializing a Comic Classic

Hosts Shanté and Tav discuss HBO’s recently completed Watchmen series and how it broke boundaries in its reckoning with legacies of racism.

Watching Watchmen

Politics, Aesthetics, & Possibility

Hosts Shanté and Tavia discuss fantasy as genre being particularly relevant to Black folks—it includes and venerates oral traditions, myth, and folklore over or included alongside technology and hard science.

Black Fantasy

Janelle Monáe and Queer Black Futures

In this debut episode, co-hosts Shanté and Tav introduce the themes of the podcast — which will consider race and speculation in all their manifestations — and breakdown the career to date of Janelle Monáe, a music icon of afrofuturism.

All About Janelle

With Tav & Shanté

Fantastic Blackness is a bimonthly podcast by Tavia Nyong’o and Shanté Paradigm Smalls focused on Black Queer Trans art, politics, aesthetics, and news. Features interviews with artmakers, reviews of art shows, stage plays, books, film and television, and topical discussion.

Fantastic Blackness

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Butler's Parable Series

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Becoming Human

The Fire This Time

Watching Watchmen