Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese academic, award-winning writer, economist, musician, and the Anne-Marie Bryan Distinguished Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Duke University. His lectures and research focus on postcolonial theory, economic policies, development, econometrics, epistemology and the history of religious ideas. Sarr’s talk will focus on African futures, drawing from his forthcoming work, The Fabrication of the Present/La Fabrique du Présent, and the implications of this concept for the rest of the world.

Sarr was awarded the Grand Prix of Literary Associations in 2016 for his essay Afrotopia, which argues for a conceptual decolonization of knowledge and a reappropriation of the metaphors of their own future by Africans. In 2021, Sarr was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People.

Co-sponsored with the Kansas African Studies Center, French Center of Excellence, the Center for Global and International Studies, Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, the Center for Cyber Social Dynamics, Department of African & African-American Studies, and French Francophone and Italian Studies.

Felwine Sarr: The Making of the Present