The 8th Annual Ethnic Studies Black History Month event at Stanislaus State will take place this year on Thursday, Feb. 26, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This will be a virtual event on Zoom, which registration is required.
Register for the 8th Annual Black Power Matters
Afrofuturism and Afro Foodways: Liberation, Creation, and Sustenance brings together imagination, creative expression, and food as powerful, interconnected practices rooted in Black resistance and collective care. This event explores how Afrofuturism challenges limiting narratives of Black life by envisioning liberated futures through art, music, embodiment, and style, while Afro Foodways sustain memory, survival, and community across the African diaspora.
Featuring Dr. A. Breeze Harper and Dr. Million Belay, the program bridges diaspora and continent-based perspectives on food, land, and futurity. Dr. Harper examines Afrofuturism in relation to Afro Foodways as embodied practices of healing and resistance across the African diaspora. Dr. Belay centers Indigenous African food systems, seed sovereignty, and ancestral knowledge as foundations for food sovereignty and future-making rooted in land and collective responsibility.
Interwoven throughout the event are six student artworks, which serve as visual and conceptual anchors for reflection and dialogue. Together, speakers, artists, and participants will consider how imagination, creativity, and food function as tools for liberation, sustaining life, and envisioning just Black futures. The event invites participants to reflect on how imagination, creative expression, and food function as interconnected tools for healing, resistance, and sustaining life across Black experiences.
Join us via Zoom to explore how liberation is imagined, built, and sustained—now.
Sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies.
Dr. Breeze Harper
Dr. Breeze Harper is an Afrofuturist scholar, cultural geographer, and author whose work examines race, ecology, and foodways through both research and speculative storytelling. She holds a PhD from UC Davis and is the author of the forthcoming Afrofuturist fiction series Seeds of Sankofa (2027), which explores soil, memory, and liberation. Her work advances a framework of nutritional liberation, connecting Black food histories, environmental justice, and future-oriented imagination.