UC Riverside

Through analysis of an educational short film, an oral history, and an sf television episode, each rehearsing human space flight, this article explores how Black women undertake the practical and imaginative tasks that make human habitation in space possible. These performances “fem[me] the future,” in the words of Afrofuturist artist and philanthropist Janelle Monáe. Nichelle Nichols’s science communications activism, Sharon McDougle’s oral history for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and actor Dominique Tipper’s starring role in The Expanse all cast them as “space workers”: non-astronauts whose work renders the space age a pluralistic endeavor rather than a stage for reproducing heroic myths. Their roles emphasize the performative rather than constative meaning of “Black femme” to embody possible futures.