Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

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 Ca...

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...

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, an...

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 priso...

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 t...

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, wh...

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 R...

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 ri...

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 mo...

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 exting...

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 p...

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 throug...

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 Ch...

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 emerg...

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 curator...

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 c...

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 reimagi...

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 i...

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...

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...

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...

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 Im...

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 tha...

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 K...

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 to...