Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

What is the difference between disability justice and disability rights? How can we make our social justice movement spaces accessible to and led by people with disabilities of all kinds? What kind of world could we create if we valued and centered the experiences of our most marginalized community members? In episode 62 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews writer and...

How have marginalized people harnessed the genre of memoir to write themselves into history? What might queer crip time teach us about the writing process? What happens when writers allow themselves the time and space to sit with their work? In episode 61 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews writer and cultural worker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha about her transfor...

What complexities arise when dance becomes a site of national identity? What kind of cultural knowledges do we carry in our bodies and perform onstage? What can scholars do to better support interdisciplinarity in their students' work? In episode 60 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews dancer and professor Manuel Cuellar about how queering Mexican folkloric dance lets...

What tensions arise when sex-positive feminists and queer folk get into the sex toy business? How can scholars get their institutions to recognize their public writing as scholarship? What ethical commitments do ethnographers have to their communities and research subjects? In episode 59 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews writer and professor Lynn Comella about the f...

How can we dismantle hierarchies between students and professors in higher education? What does critically engaged public scholarship look like? Why is fashion such a provocative and generative site for thinking about complex sociocultural issues? In episode 58 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with cultural studies scholar and writer Sara Tatyana Bernstein about why she...

How can we make queer histories accessible beyond the academy? What might those histories teach us about how social justice organizations can sustain themselves over the long haul, despite hostile political conditions? In episode 57 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with Alice Y. Hom about the political and personal process of starting a history podcast about queer and t...

How can we imagine and create speculative futures beyond whiteness? What can anthropology teach us about design and technology? And how might autoethnography and dance allow us to imagine otherwise? In episode 56 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with dancer and ethnographer Elizabeth J. Chin about the simultaneous freedom, fun, and vulnerability inherent in writing abou...

What are the emotional and political stakes of knowledge production? How can queer and trans communities of color reject transparency to better protect themselves and their cultural production? What might drag and voguing teach us about entanglement of performance, politics, and performance? In episode 55 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with professor and artist Shaka...

What racial and gender norms are baked into our concepts of professionalism? How can we push ourselves to expand our definition of what "counts" as knowledge production? What does it mean to honor blackness in all its possible forms? In Episode 54 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with cultural producer Yaba Blay about how beauty culture and colorism shape her publicly e...

How can we put reproductive justice in conversation with racial and economic justice? How are queer Latinx communities and other queers of color leading the field in comprehensive, queer-positive sex education? What can we do to make space for multiply marginalized people within ALL advocacy organizations? In episode 53 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Elicia Gonza...

What can popular music teach us about migration and cultural change? How can pleasure and joy help us redefine what it means to be a "serious" intellectual?  What might be stimulating or even transformative about the sprawl of Southern California? In episode 52 of the Imagine Otherwise Podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews podcaster and professor Karen Tongson about music and its relationship t...

What role does food play in building sustainable communities? How might cultural traditions challenge us to think differently about the environment and public health interventions? What roles do food activism and culinary entrepreneurship play in social justice work? In episode 51 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews chef and eco-educator Aileen Suzara about her journe...

What happens when we bring traditional Indian musical traditions together with electronic music and Riot Grrrl? How do marginalized communities use spiritual practices like tarot to envision other ways of being? How can we harness our multidisciplinary talents to imagine a more equitable world? In Episode 50 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews scholar and musician Lak...

How can we think about skincare as a way to care for ourselves rather than fixing imperfections? How can we reimagine beauty routines as community building practices? What does it mean to create a company grounded in intersectional feminist principles? In episode 49 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Adeline Koh about her journey from tenured English professor to ent...

How can poetry connect to and grow with a neighborhood? How can cultural workers blend their academic and creative efforts to better serve both their communities and themselves? How might we build more intergenerational community spaces in the places that we live and work? In episode 48 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, Cathy Hannabach interviews Philadelphia Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher about poe...

How can we better support the work of queer and trans artists of color? How can self-publishing create cultural conversations by and for marginalized people? How can emerging artists best navigate the tension between wanting to get their work out there while also demanding fair pay for their labor? In Episode 47 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Nia King about how s...

How can Shambhala Buddhist meditation and other body practices help writers manage stress and express their ideas? How might queer hip hop artists and forms provide models for worldmaking? How can Afro-pessimism and Afro-futurism help us to imagine a more conscious world? In episode 46 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Shanté Paradigm Smalls about their journey with...

How do Black art and creativity help imagine new worlds? How does fashion help us think about the intersection of power and desire? What can we do to make space for public scholarship and community engagement in our work? In episode 45 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, Cathy Hannabach interviews Tanisha C. Ford about her research on the cultural and political dimensions of Black fashion, the state...

What if we got rid of gender or sex classification in public restrooms, sports, college admissions, and government IDs? How does transgender discrimination affect both trans* and cisgender people? How can gender studies scholars bring their expertise to bear in nonprofits, companies, and community organizations? In episode 44  the Imagine Otherwise, podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Heath Fo...

How can scholar-artists best balance their scholarly and creative endeavors? Can sound media and podcasting make exclusive spaces more accessible? How do the words we use to describe ourselves affect how we and others perceive our work? In episode 43 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach talks with video artist Marcella Ernest about why complex subjects require complex film techni...

How can shared space drive artistic, healing collaborations? How does Indigenous art intervene in processes of consumerism, global warming, and the environmental effects of the toy market? In episode 42 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews artists Solomon Enos, Abigail Romanchak, and John Hina (Prime), who share their experiences working with the Smithsonian Asian Paci...

How can shared space drive artistic, healing collaborations? In what ways does Indigenous art engage critically with global warming, gender identity, ancestral teachings, and the importance of local community? In episode 41 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Pacific Indigenous artists Rosanna Raymond, Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi, and Ricky Tagaban, who share their e...

What would happen if we designed art exhibitions around social justice community organizing principles? How can collaboration between artists, curators, scholars, and participants generate a radical art making experience? What might an event premised on radical curation look, sound, and feel like? In episode 40 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews curators Kālewa Corre...

What does the rising popularity of the olive mean for global consumers, producers, and resisters? How do our intimate connections with food build memories and notions of place? In episode 39 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Lila Sharif discuss the role of food in both transnational settler colonialism and resistance to it, how Lila uses the classroom to get students...

How does place-making help migrants understand and disrupt racial narratives? What role does mentoring play in academic progression and in everyday life? How can scholars move past monetary definitions of self-worth as academia becomes increasingly corporatized? In episode 38 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Surbhi Malik discuss the complex place-making practices mi...