On March 17 and 18, 2023, the Center of Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) with the support of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society (CSTMS), the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC), and the Italian Institute of Culture, San Francisco hosted the multidisciplinary and multi-media conference The Past into the Future: Afrofuturism and Ancient Egypt.
The two-day conference introduced a new project, which explores the reception and cultural imagining of Ancient Egypt and of its monuments, arts, writing and religion in the Black visual arts, music and literature through the lens of scholars and artists inspired by Afrofuturism. This project aims at creating a channel and platform of communication and collaboration among egyptologists, scholars of African and African-American studies, artists and musicians from the African Diaspora inspired by the ancient Egyptian and Nubian culture.
The conference presentations were recorded and can be viewed on the Berkeley Center of Middle Eastern Studies' YouTube channel.
Day 1: https://youtu.be/vKdX3rvc3Q4
Day 2: https://youtu.be/H230lrXeul4