London: Black British Cinema and the Speculative Archive

Applications for the the College’s new London: Theorizing the Present study abroad program, presented in partnership with 3CT, are now open. The deadline is February 9, 2026.

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This course will explore forms of speculation thinking in contemporary Black British media practices. We will consider works that engage with speculation as both a necessity of archival and evidentiary paucity and a generative site for imaginative intervention. We will ask: how do these artists reimagine history? How do they negotiate archival absences, silences, and erasures? How have these artists engaged with moving image media as both assertion of a Black British identity and a counterimage—and counternarrative—to critical, social, and artistic effacements of blackness. Finally, what potentialities can critical theory draw from audio visual works that creatively engage with speculation formally and thematically?

To approach these questions, we will look at familiar discourses of Afrofuturism, Afrosurrealism, and critical fabulation, but approach them through the lens of speculation as a form of creative reckoning with the past, present, and future in the context of Black British media practices. Topics include: archival absence, archival “repair,” recouperation, historiography of loss, speculative archives, speculative historiography, problems of evidence, conflicting accounts, informed speculation, reenactment, histories of the present, appropriation, compilation, speculative media forms, and utopias/dystopias.

As a discussion-based course that satisfies the Arts, Music, Drama Core requirement, our focus will be on direct engagement with primary texts—in this case moving image media—and we will attend to course material formally, thematically, narratively, and with attunement to historical and social specificity. Each week we will watch moving image and time-based artworks, ranging from short pieces to feature-length films. Screenings will take place in class and will be supplemented with public screenings and museum and gallery exhibitions across London.

CCCT 14516 | CMST 14516 | RDIN 14516 | FNDL 14516