Black Popular Culture Scholar, Dance Educator, Choreographer
Dancing The Afrofuture

THE NEW BOOK IS HERE!

“Osumare returns with yet another striking memoir, expanding our understanding of the history of Black dance at home and abroad. Her writing is a gift to memoir and history lovers alike.”

               
 —Takiyah Amin, director of diversity, equity, and inclusion for the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design,
Virginia Tech 


Cap Radio Interview about Dancing the Afrofuture

Learn about Halifu's background and motivation for writing the book, including her work in hula and hip-hop.

Also, See My Book on African American Literature Book Club (AALBC)

PUBLICATIONS



Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy

University Press of Flrodia, Hardback and Paperback Editions, 2024; Audiobook 2025


Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir

University Press of Florida, Hardback, 2018, Paperback Edition 2019.


The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop 

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Paperback Edition, 2013.


The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop Power Moves 

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Paperback Edition, 2008.



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SIGNUP

INTERVIEWS

New 1-hour talk, "Dancing in Blackness, A Memoir: The Power of Telling Your Own Story," on Camille A. Brown's Facebook Live Series called "Social Dance for Social Distance" August 3, 2020.

Harvard University’s HIPHOPEX presents “The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip Hop,” November 18, 2020:

REFEREED BOOK CHAPTERS & JOURNAL ARTICLES
(Excerpt)

“Globalization and The Hip-Hop Dance Cipher,” 
co-authored with Terry Bright Osofu in The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, Mary Fogarty and Imani Kai Johnson, eds., Oxford University Press, 2021.

“Educating Black Youth Through Hip-Hop Studies,” 
in Revista Educação, Artes e Inclusão (Journal of Education, Arts and Inclusion) V. 16, No. 3 (2020), 31-50.

"Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir"
University Press of Florida, Hardback, 2018. Paperback 2019.

“The Fierce Freedom of Their Souls': Activism of African Dance in the Oakland Bay Area,” in Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities, eds. Kariamu Welsh, Esailama Diouf, and Yvonne Daniel. University of Illinois Press, 2019.

“Hiplife," in Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Vol. XII Genres: Sub-Saharan Africa. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 273-278.

“Socialization through the Arts: Katherine Dunham as Social Activist,” in Sentient Performativities of Embodiment: Thinking alongside the Human, Lynette Hunter, Elisabeth Krimmer, and Peter Lichtenfels, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016, 297-314.

“Damsel in Distress: Django Unchained as Revenge Fantasy,” in Black Hollywood Unchained: Commentary on the sate of Black Hollywood, ed. Ismael Reed. Chicago: Third World Press, 2015, 81-83.

“Keeping it Real: Race, Class, and Youth Connections Through Hip-Hop in the U.S. & Brazil,” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 37, 2015, 6-18.

“Marginalidades Connectivas” do Hip Hop e a Diáspora Africana: os Casos de Cuba e do Brasil, in Mõnica do Amaral and Lourdes Carril, eds., O Hip Hop e as Diásporas Africanas na Modernidade. São Paulo, Brazil. Alameda, Ca, 2015.

“Conjuring Magic as Survival: Hip-Hop Theater and Dance,” in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, Nadine George-Graves, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 29-37.

“Getting ‘A Message Through to the Red, White, and Blue’: Ice-T in the Age of Obama,” in Josephine Metcalf and Will Turner, eds., Rapper, Writer, Pop-Cultural Player: Ice-T and the Politics of Black Cultural Production. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014, 255-278.

“Wrapped in Illusion: The Hip-Hop Emcee as Trickster,” in Toyin Falola, ed. Ésú: Yoruba God, Power, and the Imaginative Frontiers. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2013.

“Hip-Hop’s Connective Marginiality in the African Diaspora: The Cases of Cuba and Brazil,” The African Diasporas in the Modern World: Culture, Identity and Resistance. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Vozes, 2013.

“Becoming a ‘Society of the Spectacle’: Ghanaian Hiplife Music and Corporate Recolonization.” Popular Music and Society online, March, 2013: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007766.2012.747262.

“Motherland Hip-Hop: African American Youth Culture in Senegal and Kenya,” in Ifeoma C.K. Nwamkwo & Mamadou Diouf, Eds. Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World: Rituals and Remembrances , University of Michigan Press, 2010, 161-177.

“Dancing the Black Atlantic: Katherine Dunham’s Research-to-Performance Model,” “Migration of Movement: Dance Across Americas,” a special issue of AmeriQuest (www.ameriquests.org) 7.1 (Spring 2010)

“Sacred Dance/Drumming: Reciprocation & Contention within African Belief Systems in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area,” in Lillian Ashcraft Eason, Darnie Martin, and Oyeronke Olademo, Eds., Women and New and Africana Religions. Santa Barbara CA: Praeger, 2010, 123-144.

“Rap & Hip Hop,” Encyclopedic Entry, The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, F. Abiola Irele and Biodun Jeyifo, Eds. Oxford University Press, 2010, 272-275.

“The Dance Archeology of Rennie Harris: Hip-Hop or Postmodern?” in Julie Malnig, ed., Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader, University of Illinois Press, 2008, 261-281.