About this virtual book club
The Digital Humanities Center invites you to join us for the Nnedi Okorafor virtual book club this January! First help us choose a book– and then explore Okorafor’s Black speculative fiction as part of a community of fellow readers. Read along, share your thoughts on our guided weekly prompts, and participate in a final “live” zoom session. Then come back the following week on January 26th to hear Okorafor speak at the 2023 Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture.
Nnedi Okorafor Virtual Book Club Schedule
This virtual reading club will take place on the Book Club site in the first two weeks of January and in a virtual Zoom session on January 19th. You can join in on your own schedule and discuss as much or as little as you’d like. You will need to create an account on this site to participate in discussion. If you’d like to participate in the Zoom session, please register here. Participation in all events related to the virtual book club is completely free.
Warming Up - December 21st, 2022
Noor wins for the Okorafor book club!
Week 1 - January 1-7, 2023
The first set of prompts is released and discussion begins on Noor! Be sure to sign up so you don’t miss it!
Week 2 - January 8-14, 2023
The second set of prompts is released and discussion continues on the site!
Week 3 - January 19, 2023, 6-7:30 PM
Join us on Zoom for a live discussion of Noor!
Nnedi Okorafor Lecture - January 26, 2023, 6:00 PM, Diana Center Event Oval, Barnard College
About Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor is an international award-winning New York Times Bestselling novelist of science fiction and fantasy for children, young adults and adults. Born in the United States to Nigerian immigrant parents, Okorafor is known for drawing from African cultures to create captivating stories with unforgettable characters and evocative settings. Okorafor has received the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner and Lodestar Awards and multiple Hugo Awards, amongst others, for her books.
Champions of her work include Neil Gaiman, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, George RR Martin, and Rick Riordan. Literary ancestors Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. Le Guin and Nawal El Saadawi also loved her work. Okorafor holds a PhD in Literature, two Master’s Degrees (Journalism and Literature) and lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her daughter Anyaugo.
About the Digital Humanities Center at Barnard College
The Barnard College Digital Humanities Center is a research, teaching, and learning facility dedicated to the creation and preservation of dynamic connections between the analog and the digital. Our team supports students and faculty via a wide range of methods – from textual and timeline analysis, to visualizing data and mapping, to digital archiving and interactive learning. Additionally, the Center develops and hosts a variety of initiatives sited at the intersections of critical theory, technology, feminism, anti-racism, environmental sustainability, and social justice more broadly. Through its innovative deployment of technology, the DHC has built and continues to sustain a community of scholars, theorists, professionals, and activists around the globe, grounding our thoroughly interdisciplinary approach to the humanities in practices of equitable transnational collaboration. From its inception, the DHC has successfully engaged with students, faculty, staff, and alumnae through its curricular collaborations, individual research support, and inspiring programming.
About the Africana Studies Department at Barnard College
As a department for the multidisciplinary study of the history, politics, cultures, and literatures of Africa and African Diaspora communities in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe, Africana Studies at Barnard is defined by a unique approach to studying the African Diaspora that centers on a gendered analysis of racial and diasporic formations. Its central mission is to train students to think critically about the gendered nature of racial difference from a relational perspective: at once locally, globally, and trans/nationally. The curriculum provides students with a deep knowledge of:
- the history of African and African-descended cultures forged prior to and as a result of the Middle Passage;
- the transnational communities of affiliation created in response to diasporic dispersal; and
- the diverse forms of cultural production engendered by Blacks in the multiple contact zones that constitute the African diaspora.
About the Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture in Africana Studies
The Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture in Africana Studies is an annual lecture with a focus upon interdisciplinary subjects that are at the heart of African diasporic and African scholarship and artistic creation, and community and social commitment.
The series takes its place among a handful of distinguished lecture series in Africana Studies around the country thanks to an endowment by Mrs. Denise Jackson-Lewis(’66) in honor of what she has described as transformative experiences at Barnard and the enduring and unexpected gift of friendship that began when she and Adaeze Otue Ezekoye(’66) met as College freshmen. The lecture reflects the spirit of this gift by drawing to Barnard scholars, artists, activists and thinkers from within national and transnational circles.