Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire artwork

Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

160 episodes - English - Latest episode: 4 months ago - ★★★★★ - 22 ratings

A podcast about bridging art, activism, and academia to build more just futures. On each episode, host Cathy Hannabach interviews the scholars, dancers, authors, artists, and filmmakers imagining collective freedom and creating it through culture.

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Episodes

Juan Llamas-Rodriguez on the Visual Politics of Border Tunnels

December 11, 2023 21:35 - 23 minutes - 19.1 MB

How do media representations of US–Mexico border tunnels shape immigration discourse, public policy, and anti-immigrant violence? To help us think through how these tunnels are represented and often overrepresented in US media, in episode 158 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author Juan Llamas-Rodriguez about his new book Border Tunnels: A Media Theory of the US–Mexico Underground. For all of their visual obscurity and inaccessibility, tunnels are hyper...

Tamara Kneese on Death in the Digital Platform Age

November 14, 2023 13:33 - 21 minutes - 17.4 MB

In episode 157 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews media scholar and Ideas on Fire author Tamara Kneese about the complex relationship between Big Tech and mortality, specifically how digital media platforms mediate our experiences of death. Tamara is a senior researcher and project director of Data & Society’s AIMLab, and her new book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond was recently published by Yale University Press. In their conversa...

Nicosia Shakes on Black Women's Activist Theater

October 04, 2023 15:10 - 26 minutes - 21.4 MB

In episode 156 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews scholar and artist Nicosia Shakes, whose creative and scholarly work celebrates the intertwining of political activism and performance across the African diaspora. Nicosia's play Afiba and Her Daughters, which offers an intergenerational narrative of Jamaican herstory, premiered at the Rites and Reason Theatre in Providence. Nicosia’s new book Women’s Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa: Gender, Race, and Perfo...

Meryl Alper on Autistic Kids’ Digital Media

September 20, 2023 18:58 - 23 minutes - 19 MB

In episode 155 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews disability media studies scholar Meryl Alper. Meryl is the author of 3 books about how kids with disabilities use digital technologies, including her most recent book, ​​Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age. Kids Across the Spectrums is out now from MIT Press and it is the first book-length ethnography of the digital lives of diverse young people on the autism spectrum. In their conversati...

Kristie Soares on Joy in Latinx Media

September 07, 2023 17:54 - 16 minutes - 13.2 MB

In episode 154 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews performance artist and gender studies scholar Kristie Soares about the political power of pleasure, laughter, and joy in Latinx media. Kristie’s new book Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latin Media has chapters about gozando in salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party, choteo in the comedy ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?, azúcar in the life and death of Celia Cruz, dale as Pitbull’s signature affect, and s...

Cynthia Franklin on Narrative and Activist Politics

August 10, 2023 15:23 - 22 minutes - 18.3 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews literature professor Cynthia Franklin about the politics of life writing.  Cynthia’s new book Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea traces the complex ways activists, artists, cultural producers, and scholars engage genres like memoir and autobiography to resist racial capitalism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, and climate change. In their conversation, Cynthia and Cathy chat about why narrative plays such a lar...

Magdalena Barrera and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales on The Latinx Guide to Graduate School

July 12, 2023 12:22 - 24 minutes - 19.5 MB

In episode 152 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews education scholars and leaders Magdalena L. Barrera and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales about their new book The Latinx Guide to Graduate School. Magdalena and Genevieve teamed up to write this guide after many years of advising Latinx graduate students struggling to navigate the hidden curriculum of academia—a curriculum built around norms of whiteness, wealth, and settler heteronormativity. Demonstrating the brilliance, sch...

Katie Walkiewicz on Indigenous and Black Freedom

June 15, 2023 16:42 - 19 minutes - 15.4 MB

In episode 151 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Indigenous studies and literature professor Katie Walkiewicz about states’ rights and the role this concept has played in US settler colonialism, enslavement, and dispossession as well as in radical projects seeking to create alternative political structures. Katie Walkiewicz is an enrolled citizen of Cherokee Nation, an assistant professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, and the associate direct...

Jasmine Nichole Cobb on Haptic Blackness

March 08, 2023 11:00 - 17 minutes - 14.2 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Black visual studies scholar Jasmine Nichole Cobb about haptic blackness and the cultural politics of Black hair in US visual culture. Jasmine is a professor of African and African American studies and of art, art history, and visual studies at Duke University. Her recent book New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair traces the history of Black hair in visual culture across documentary films, portrait photography, advertising, sculpture, and television....

Mairead Sullivan on Lesbian Feminist World-building

February 22, 2023 19:32 - 28 minutes - 22.6 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews women’s and gender studies professor Mairead Sullivan about the histories and futures of lesbian feminism. Mairead is the author of the new book Lesbian Death: Desire and Danger between Feminist and Queer, which offers a love letter to lesbian feminist world building while also refuting the weaponization of lesbian identity against trans lives and trans communities.  In their conversation, Mairead and Cathy explore how the political and economic proje...

Josen Masangkay Diaz on Postcolonial Configurations

February 08, 2023 16:06 - 16 minutes - 13.8 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews ethnic studies and women and gender studies professor Josen Masangkay Diaz about US–Philippine relations during the Cold War and how that history shapes Filipino America today. In their conversation, Josen and Cathy explore the role of race, nation, and gender during the Cold War, particularly how they were renegotiated in the wake of decolonization and the postcolonial nation-building projects that followed. They discuss Josen’s research into how postcolo...

Erin Durban on the Sexual Politics of Empire

January 25, 2023 11:00 - 25 minutes - 20.7 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews anthropologist Erin Durban about the past and present relationship between the United States and Haiti as it shapes the lives of queer and trans Haitians. In their conversation, Erin and Cathy talk about the history of US occupation and imperialism in Haiti and how it shapes the work international LGBTQ organizations began doing there in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Erin also shares how their approach to ethnographic research has shifted ov...

Jennifer Lynn Kelly on Anticolonial Solidarity Tourism

January 11, 2023 12:00 - 17 minutes - 14.5 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews feminist studies and ethnic studies professor Jennifer Lynn Kelly about her new book Invited to Witness. In their conversation, Cathy and Jennifer talk about the temporality and pace of doing ethnographic research for this book while also navigating state visa politics, job search demands, and family commitments can pull in multiple directions. Jennifer also shares the importance of letting a writing project change itself and change its writer over time, a...

Josef Nguyen on the Politics of Flexibility

March 11, 2022 20:33 - 22 minutes - 18.1 MB

Cathy Hannabach interviews digital media scholar Josef Nguyen about the promises and perils of flexible planning, why cultural anxieties over uncertain futures are so often routed through debates over flexible educational technology, and ways to put flexibility to use in the classroom, on the page, and in our daily lives in ways that center collective support and more just worlds. Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/145-josef-nguyen

Anima Adjepong on Interdisciplinary Intuition

December 18, 2021 19:39 - 21 minutes - 17.1 MB

The massive changes we’ve collectively experienced over the past two years of a global pandemic have caused many of us to ask some big questions about who we are and what we want to be doing. It’s also pushed us to embrace our embodied capacity and make conscious changes to nourish our spirit as well as our creative, professional, and communal goals for the future. It seems only fitting that we close out 2021 with an episode about intuition, or how we learn to listen for and heed that in...

Nitasha Tamar Sharma on Recalibration and Balance

November 10, 2021 12:00 - 15 minutes - 12.9 MB

We’re reaching that time of year when the days shorten and we start to wonder if we’ll get everything done we wanted to this year. In this season, many of us yearn for more balance in our daily routines and the second year of an ongoing global pandemic has made that feeling even more intense. What does balance even mean in this context and how can we cultivate it in ways that feed our collective desires for justice? In episode 143 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Nit...

Catherine Knight Steele on Black Feminist Extensions of Grace

October 13, 2021 11:00 - 23 minutes - 18.9 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews digital studies scholar and professor Catherine Knight Steele, whose work reveals the central role Black women and Black feminists have played in developing, challenging, and transforming our digital technologies. Approaching Black digital studies holistically, Catherine shows how marginalized groups build lasting community through online, in-person, and hybrid practices, including sustainable models for mentorship and mutual support. In their conversation...

Christopher Ali on Building a More Connected World

September 29, 2021 11:00 - 16 minutes - 13.1 MB

Even before the global COVID-19 pandemic, access to reliable, high-performance broadband internet was a necessity for many of us to be able to meaningfully participate in our workplaces, schools, and communities. The pandemic has made this even more apparent. The digital divide separating those with access from those without is hardly a new issue but what is less often discussed is how that digital divide looks different in rural versus urban spaces. In episode 141 of Imagine Otherwise, ...

Sandra Ristovska on Seeing Human Rights

September 01, 2021 11:00 - 23 minutes - 19.2 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and media studies scholar Sandra Ristovska about the complex ethical, political, and legal relationship between imagery and human rights. They discuss the role of video evidence in simultaneously exposing and reproducing injustice, the often life-and-death stakes of critical visual interpretation, and what it means to turn the act of seeing each other into a practice of human rights. Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/140-sandra-r...

Jessica Bissett Perea on Indigenous Transformations in Academic Publishing

August 18, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutes - 17.7 MB

Publishing plays a central role in higher education, primarily through the hiring, tenure, and promotion process. Because of this, transforming academic publishing means transforming how scholarly knowledge itself is produced, circulated, and applied. The research process, writing process, and publishing process are all deeply intertwined and all offer opportunities to build the kinds of worlds we want to inhabit. To explore how this process works and the worldmaking possibilities it ope...

Priya Kandaswamy on Embracing Permanent Change

August 04, 2021 11:30 - 35 minutes - 20.3 MB

We’ve all experienced a LOT of change over the past year and a half. Many of the things we assumed to be stable anchors suddenly turned out not to be, as everything from the global economy and education to politics and media were irrevocably transformed. Many with privilege have responded to such upheaval by demanding a swift and complete return to the same capitalist normal that unevenly organized life in the before times. But those for whom the old normal was a source of oppression rat...

Mark Villegas on Collaborative Abundance in Hip-Hop Cultures

July 21, 2021 13:01 - 15 minutes - 9.05 MB

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and hip-hop scholar Mark Villegas, who has built his career foregrounding the power of collective abundance. Highlighting the strength, inspiration, and generosity that emerges from collaboration, Mark’s endeavors illustrate the transformations that take place when diverse ideas and cultural traditions are brought together. In the conversation, Mark and Cathy chat about why multiracial, transnational, and cross-generational hip-hop cultures have ...

Maile Arvin on Kuleana and Indigenous Feminist Community

June 23, 2021 11:00 - 14 minutes - 11.9 MB

Community building is a cornerstone of progressive social and intellectual movements. Resisting capitalist individualism, we know how vital social bonds are in sustaining our identities, our dreams, and even our very lives. But it’s easy to romanticize community and forget the work involved in forging and tending those social bonds—labor that often reflects the very power dynamics that we seek to dismantle. In episode 136 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Kānaka Maoli...

Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla on Cite Black Women

June 09, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutes - 17.1 MB

Centuries of Black feminist intellectuals have demonstrated how knowledge production is always deeply political, revealing whose labor and lives we value. Publicly citing and generously engaging with the contributions that others have made to our thinking is a crucial way we remake the world. In episode 135 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla, the three co-editors of the recent ground-breaking special issue of Feminist ...

Liat Ben-Moshe on Community beyond the Carceral State

May 26, 2021 11:00 - 19 minutes - 11.3 MB

Movements organized around disability justice, prison and police abolition, queer and trans feminism, and economic justice have long shown how intersecting systems of oppression require intersectional frameworks for resistance. On episode 134 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Liat Ben-Moshe, who has spent her career tracing what she calls carceral ableism, or the ways the prison industrial complex and anti-disability logics shape one another in our daily lives and our p...

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan on Cultivating Joy through Queer Black Feminist Art

May 12, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutes - 12.3 MB

Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more vibrant intersectional and interdisciplinary cultural production get the attention it so richly deserves. This work builds on a long history of refusing to separate the personal from the political in Third World and women of color feminism, radical Black and queer activism, and movements for economic, disability, and environmental justice. All of these traditions have valued the role of art in sparking social change, as the creative and the r...

J. Faith Almiron on Abolitionist Pedagogy within and beyond Institutions

April 30, 2021 19:04 - 14 minutes - 11.6 MB

Building an abolitionist university or museum requires more than just updating some policies. It requires rethinking from the ground up what we want out of our cultural institutions and renewing our commitment to bringing that abolitionist vision to fruition. In episode 132 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews scholar, performance artist, and Prince-enthusiast J. Faith Almiron, whose interdisciplinary crisscrossing of academic, artistic, and activist spaces demonstrates th...

La Marr Bruce on Renewal, Loss, and Black Creativity

April 14, 2021 11:00 - 11 minutes - 9.65 MB

As scholars, we often like to think we have everything under control. We work hard to meet deadlines, fulfill our responsibilities, and get everything done. So what happens when global and personal events throw all of that out the window? In episode 131 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews La Marr Bruce, whose La new book How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind: Madness and Black Radical Creativity, ended up on a much windier publication path than expected due to both the...

Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart on Transgenerational Inspiration

March 31, 2021 17:10 - 20 minutes - 16.6 MB

Spring is normally a time of emergence and inspiration but many scholars, artists, and organizers are struggling after a year spent inside and a pandemic that is still far from over. In episode 130 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Kānaka Maoli food studies scholar Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart. Hi‘ilei’s approach to scholarly and activist inspiration brings the rich histories and futures of Indigenous community building to bear on her daily practices of wr...

Badia Ahad-Legardy on Black Historical Joy and Inspiration

March 17, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutes - 12.5 MB

How can looking to the past enliven the present and inspire the future? And how can we foment that inspiration in our daily practices and habits? In episode 129 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Badia Ahad-Legardy, whose most recent book Afro-Nostalgia is a brilliant and energizing archive of Black historical joy. Badia’s work demonstrates the powerful role pleasure plays in motivating social change and forging communal ties across time and space. In the conversation,...

Gwen D’Arcangelis on Inspiration for Scholar-Activists

March 03, 2021 12:00 - 27 minutes - 16.2 MB

For those of us in the social justice-oriented interdisciplines like gender studies, ethnic studies, and disability studies, our desire to make real people’s lives better is often the reason we became scholars to begin with. But it can be difficult to sustain that inspiration over the long term, especially as the daily grind of academic life, activist burnout, and current events threaten to extinguish the motivating spark that brought us to this vital work in the first place. So how can ...

Dolores Inés Casillas on Flexible Planning with Bullet Journals

February 17, 2021 14:03 - 17 minutes - 10.2 MB

Our systems for tracking and making progress on our goals are often deeply personal and idiosyncratic. How we organize our days to find motivation changes over time as well, as our lives and our worlds shift in ways we don’t always get to control. In episode 127 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach talks to Chicanx media studies scholar Dolores Inés Casillas about the creative planning and project management systems that scholars use to get their writing done while navigating the res...

Meredith D. Clark on Adapting Plans to Where You’re At

February 03, 2021 12:00 - 27 minutes - 15.9 MB

Even our best-laid plans go awry sometimes and require us to adjust on the fly. Whether it’s throwing out our timeline for publication or experimenting with a new teaching technique, adapting our plans to meet the changing world is a crucial part of any interdisciplinary project. But how can we make sure our plan adjustments serve our collective political and ethical goals? To help us think through this question, in episode 126 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews journali...

Chris Barcelos on Beginning from Educated Hope

January 27, 2021 12:00 - 23 minutes - 13.6 MB

It’s the beginning of a new year and normally that would mean a flurry of ambitious new projects, goals, and plans to achieve them both. But ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us are hesitant to begin new things right now, given the degree of uncertainty shaping our world and our daily lives. In episode 125, host Cathy Hannabach interviews sexuality studies and public health scholar Chris Barcelos. Chris uses José Esteban Muñoz’s concept of educated hope to illustrate how we ca...

Siobhan Brooks on Reckoning with Violence

December 09, 2020 12:00 - 19 minutes - 16 MB

Despite the cliché, 2020 really is one for the history books. Between a global pandemic disproportionately harming communities of color, racist and ableist police shootings, and legal and personal attacks on queer and trans populations, we have a lot to reckon with as this year comes to a close. In episode 124, host Cathy Hannabach interviews sociologist Siobhan Brooks about how these events emerge from long histories of racially gendered violence and why our reckoning must contend with th...

Bakirathi Mani on Curating with Confidence

November 25, 2020 12:00 - 22 minutes - 13.2 MB

The collaborative art of curation is one that takes a complex mixture of confidence and humility. Curators need confidence in their choices and artistic voice but the humility to stay open to learning from others and being surprised by the process. The career of today’s guest, Bakirathi Mani, demonstrates how this dance of confidence and humility enables postcolonial artists, scholars, and curators to challenge imperial visualities while building transnational community. In episode 123 o...

Jillian Hernandez on the Politics of Confidence and Creativity

November 11, 2020 09:00 - 23 minutes - 13.7 MB

Women and girls are constantly bombarded with messages to be more confident. Although such advice might be useful for some, it doesn’t account for how race and class shape the politics of confidence to begin with, much less center the perspectives of women, girls, and femmes of color in determining the goals of such confidence. In episode 122 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews curator, community arts educator, and professor Jillian Hernandez, whose interdisciplinary re...

Aimi Hamraie on Sustainability and Disability Justice

October 28, 2020 08:00 - 39 minutes - 22.6 MB

How does disability justice provide tools for building more sustainable social relations and practices, both during and beyond the current pandemic? In episode 121 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews permaculture designer and disability studies scholar Aimi Hamraie about using natural cycles to prevent burnout, how disability culture practices like slowness and mutual aid reimagine sustainability as collective, and why building a world beyond scarcity is how Aimi imagines...

Anusha Kedhar on the Limits of Flexibility

October 14, 2020 08:00 - 20 minutes - 11.7 MB

The dance world and academia are two creative industries known for innovative thinking and vibrant collaborations. But they also share a sustainability problem, as burnout and exhaustion are par for the course and the vast majority of jobs are temporary and precarious. Today’s guest—dancer, scholar, and choreographer Anusha Kedhar—suggests that the increasing demand for more and more flexibility is at the root of such unsustainable relations. The global pandemic has made this even more app...

Sasha Engelmann on Art and Activism in the Air

September 30, 2020 08:00 - 31 minutes - 18.1 MB

What do politics, community, and artistic resistance look like beyond the terrestrial? What would happen if we took them to the sky? In episode 119 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews feminist geographical researcher and practitioner Sasha Engelmann, whose work radically transforms our cultural imaginaries of atmosphere and environment. Foregrounding creative-critical approaches to environmental sensing, Sasha examines the role of art in crafting new narratives of atmosph...

Christopher Persaud on Creating Balance to Avoid Burnout

September 16, 2020 11:00 - 23 minutes - 13.6 MB

For those of us who thrive on doing all the things, it is incredibly easy to put off rest and self-care—at least until we hit burnout. Scholars, artists, activists, and other creatives are particularly prone to burnout under even normal circumstances but the pandemic has made this even more acute as we juggle new tasks and emotions. As today’s guest emphasizes, building rest and recovery into our schedules is more important than ever and it requires realistically managing projects with bal...

Koritha Mitchell on Homemade Citizenship

September 02, 2020 08:00 - 33 minutes - 27.4 MB

How might the history of Black women’s creative homemaking and citizenship practices help us navigate our current political and cultural moment? What might this history reveal about the racially gendered roots of blurred work and home boundaries? In episode 117 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews cultural critic, professor, and scholar Koritha Mitchell, whose new book From Slave Cabins to the White House traces the creative ways African American women have forged homemade...

Kishonna Gray on Teaching and Parenting in a Pandemic

August 19, 2020 10:00 - 33 minutes - 19.7 MB

One of the biggest concerns right now for academics who are also parents is figuring out how to juggle education for both their students and their children. Many K–12 and higher education institutions have moved to remote instruction for the fall while racialized patriarchy and heteronormativity shape domestic duties in the home space that is now many peoples’ work space as well. Episode 116 of Imagine Otherwise addresses how academic parents are navigating this terrain and developing a so...

Adrienne Shaw on Accessible Online Teaching by Design

August 05, 2020 08:00 - 50 minutes - 29.4 MB

How can we build accessible online courses in the middle of a pandemic? More than just a call to reproduce in-person teaching in digital environments, this pivot to online education has a powerful potential to help us reshape higher education for the better, to ensure it embodies the racial, gender, and disability justice principles those of us in the interdisciplines have long championed. But that takes rethinking some of our most basic assumptions about what education means and who it is...

Dorinne Kondo on Reparative Creativity

June 24, 2020 11:00 - 32 minutes - 18.9 MB

What role can performance play in racial justice struggles? How can theater help us remake the world? The past several months have made even more urgent the centuries-long fight to dismantle the antiblackness and Orientalism that are baked into our social institutions. Such transformations are at the heart of the pedagogy, scholarship, and dramaturgy produced by today’s guest, playwright Dorinne Kondo. Dorinne’s work traces what she calls “reparative creativity,” or the ways artists make, ...

Ani Maitra on Media and Identity in the Public Sphere

June 11, 2020 11:00 - 30 minutes - 17.9 MB

The mediated politics of identity have animated movements as diverse as anticolonial nationalisms, multiple forms of feminism, transgender and disability rights struggles, and Indigenous protests for environmental justice. In all of these examples, media has been a primary and deeply public means through which such identity politics battles are fought, often in unpredictable ways. The guest for today's episode is media studies scholar Ani Maitra, who has a new book out that offers a fresh ...

Zakiyyah Iman Jackson on Black Feminist Interdisciplinarity

May 27, 2020 08:00 - 23 minutes - 13.4 MB

What would happen if we threw out the boundaries between academic disciplines? How would our collective histories, conflicts, and corporealities change if we stopped assuming that art, science, and politics have ever been separate projects? Today's guest, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, argues that the complexity of blackness and gender reveal the deep imbrications of all of these projects at the bedrock of what it means to be human. In episode 112 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Han...

Porchia Moore on Cultural Heritage and Collective Freedom

May 13, 2020 08:00 - 25 minutes - 15 MB

How does cultural heritage provide us with the tools to shape what collective freedom looks, sounds, and feels like? This question and its political stakes has guided the life’s work of our guest today, Porchia Moore. In episode 111 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews museum visionary and activist-scholar Porchia Moore about the radical librarians and museum workers who are making information and art institutions newly accessible in our new social distancing w...

Juana María Rodríguez and Emma Pérez on Writing Partnerships

April 29, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 35.5 MB

Given everything that’s going on in the world right now, writing is the last thing on many people’s minds. Amidst the uncertainty, anxiety, and grief, many of our writing projects have taken a back seat to other more pressing demands. But what if we approach writing not as a solitary distraction or a productivity demand but rather as a vital source of social support? How might the bonds forged through collaboratively writing with another sustain us through this incredibly difficult time? ...

Hunter Vaughan on the Ecological Impact of Media Technologies

April 15, 2020 08:00 - 29 minutes - 17.1 MB

Among the many effects of the recent pandemic and social distancing practices is that most of us find ourselves spending more and more time with screens and smart devices as our daily lives move even further online. The stories we consume through these screens and the material production of our devices have complex, interwoven histories that reveal the limits of global capitalism as well as the ethical, ecological, and political importance of thinking critically about media technologies. If ...