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Work & Project Highlights

Work & Project Highlights
Photo by FlyD / Unsplash

Keynote Feature

Watch Dr. Aiesha Turman’s keynote exploring the role of Black women in shaping liberatory futures through cultural memory, speculative thought, and radical imagination:

CENTRALIZING BLACK WOMEN IN PURSUIT OF A BLACK FUTURE

Legacy Weaver's Lab

Status: Archived in 2025
Platform: Digital learning space (2023–2025)

Legacy Weaver’s Lab was a digital learning platform and community dedicated to Afrofuturism, Black speculative fiction, and liberatory praxis. Through self-paced courses, workshops, and curated resources, it fostered critical inquiry, creative expression, and reflection for scholars, educators, and lifelong learners.

As founder and lead facilitator, I designed offerings that bridged the past, present, and speculative futures—including courses on Afrofuturism’s foundations, the BaKongo Cosmogram, and Black speculative fiction as a method for reimagining history and identity.

Though now archived, Legacy Weaver’s Lab remains an important expression of my commitment to transformative, accessible learning and community-based liberation work.

Zora Neale Hurston Summit

Role: Steering Committee Member
Date: January 2025 | Location: Barnard College

In early 2025, the Zora Neale Hurston Summit took place at Barnard College—marking the first-of-its-kind celebration of Hurston’s life and legacy. Organized by the Zora Neale Hurston Trust and held on the campus where Zora matriculated and graduated in 1928, the two-day event convened family members, scholars, artists, and fans to honor her enduring influence across literature, anthropology, and culture.

As a member of the steering committee, I contributed to strategic planning and helped shape content, including immersive audio narrations activated through QR code installations—designed to bring Zora’s story to life in new dimensions. The summit featured over 70 multidisciplinary presenters, including luminaries such as Carla Kaplan, Ibram X. Kendi, and faculty from Barnard and Columbia, alongside representatives from the Hurston family.

This inaugural summit was a full public gathering—free to attend—and served as a kind of scholarly reunion, inviting participants to step into Hurston’s world and explore her vision through panels, performances, exhibitions, and collective ritual.

Crip Camp

I served as a curriculum co-writer for Crip Camp, the Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning documentary produced by the Obama Higher Ground production company and released on Netflix. The film chronicles the story of Camp Jened—a 1970s summer camp for disabled teens that became a breeding ground for the U.S. disability rights movement.

Working alongside a team of educators and activists, I helped develop an educational framework that translated the film’s themes into dynamic, justice-centered learning experiences. The Crip Camp curriculum became a free and widely used teaching tool in classrooms, universities, and community organizations across the country.

Structured around principles of intersectionality, liberation, and accessibility, the curriculum invites learners to explore disability justice in relation to race, gender, class, and activism. It provides resources for reflection, discussion, and action—encouraging users to not just understand the history, but to locate themselves within it and become agents of change.

Through this work, I contributed to a broader public conversation about inclusion, interdependence, and the unfinished work of liberation.

Audio Drama Projects

As a member of the Bondfire Radio Theater Ensemble, I co-wrote and voice-acted in The Weeksville Project and served as the narrator for The Comet, two audio dramas that blend history, storytelling, and Afrofuturism.

The Weeksville Project is a three-part series inspired by the historic free Black community of Weeksville, Brooklyn. Through extensive historical research, the series reimagines life in this vibrant 19th-century town, weaving together themes of resilience, community, and speculative possibilities rooted in history.

The Comet, adapted from W.E.B. Du Bois’ seminal short story, explores themes of race, survival, and cosmic isolation. As the sole narrator, I brought this Afrofuturist vision to life, examining humanity’s potential for connection amidst global catastrophe.

These projects merge historical inquiry with speculative imagination, using audio storytelling as a medium to reclaim narratives and envision Black futures.

The Black Girl Project

Originally launched in 2010 as a documentary exploring the richness and complexity of Black girlhood, The Black Girl Project evolved into a multi-platform space for healing, self-discovery, and collective growth. Over the years, it offered retreats, workshops, and community gatherings for Black girls and women. Now, as I look toward 2026, the project is being reimagined with a focus on adult Black women—still rooted in storytelling and transformation, and still centering joy, care, and liberation.

For more information, visit blackgirlproject.org.

Speaking & Consulting

I have presented or given talks at host of institutions and organizations including, but not limited to: National Women's Studies Association, Northeast Modern Language Association, Allied Media conference, Mosaic Literary Conference, Bethune-Cookman University, NY Metropolitan American Studies Conference, Lehman College, The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Conference, and American Literature Association Conference.

A Snapshot of Some of My Work