This is part 2 of a two-part episode. In this part, we're continuing our conversation with media practitioner and artist-researcher Prakash Krishnan from "Do The Kids Know?" We explore Instagram as a tool of community building and visual culture as a medium for empowerment.

Contributors: Dean's Office, "Best, Concordia" Podcast, and the Ethnography Lab at Concordia.

Prakash Krishnan (he/him) is a researcher and educator in the fields of digital media, archives, accessibility, and contemporary art. He recently completed a Master of Arts in Media Studies and is the coordinator at Concordia’s Access in the Making (AIM) Lab. Apart from his duties at AIM, Prakash co-produces and hosts Do The Kids Know?, a biweekly podcast exploring race, media, popular culture, and politics in Canada and occasionally moonlights as an artist, essayist, and comedian. Having had struggled in solitude to navigate issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality for over twenty years, Prakash is deeply committed in facilitating these discussions for those new to the work of un/learning.

This is part 1 of a two-part episode. In this part, we're talking to media practitioner and artist-researcher Prakash Krishnan from Do The Kids Know? about his podcast as well as the ways we can use our positions in academia to advance our activism.

Contributors: Dean's Office, "Best, Concordia" Podcast, and the Ethnography Lab at Concordia.

Prakash Krishnan (he/him) is a researcher and educator in the fields of digital media, archives, accessibility, and contemporary art. He recently completed a Master of Arts in Media Studies and is the coordinator at Concordia’s Access in the Making (AIM) Lab. Apart from his duties at AIM, Prakash co-produces and hosts Do The Kids Know?, a biweekly podcast exploring race, media, popular culture, and politics in Canada and occasionally moonlights as an artist, essayist, and comedian. Having had struggled in solitude to navigate issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality for over twenty years, Prakash is deeply committed in facilitating these discussions for those new to the work of un/learning.

This full episode serves to explore, discuss, and develop actionable practices to deconstruct syllabus and alternative forms of pedagogy, by looking at intersections between music jams and a classroom. How can we "jazz-up" our syllabus?

In the second part of episode 3, our team explore decolonial practices around syllabus deconstruction and explores new pedagogies inspired by artists, jam sessions and other ways to work together that gives room to each player, but also improves our listening and our way to tune in. Building on lived experiences we also highlight some of the best classroom experiences that push the limits of student agency and create a new learning environment. Some of these explorations could potentially evolve the social dynamics, to become undisciplined and flatten awkward power dynamics in the classroom towards horizontality.

DPP Members hosting:

Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Chesline Pierre-Paul, Albane Gaudissart

Best Concordia Producer: Kris Millet

Editor: Connie Phung

Guests:

Matthias Mushinski: Matthias is a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia. His doctoral research is, above all else, a rigorous celebration of another way of being together that is offered in the social aesthetics of free jazz and its improvisatory protocols. In April 2022 he will begin a residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia where he will study under the direction of Linda Goode Bryant, Thomas Lax, Greg Tate and Arthur Jafa. An avid record collector and olfactory cosmonaut, Matthias spends his days meditating on themes such as beauty, (non)relationality, and the distinction--or lack thereof--between montage and ensemble. He is part of a listening collective that hosts a monthly radio show on n10.as titled Out From Outside.

This full episode serves to explore, discuss, and develop actionable practices to deconstruct syllabus and alternative forms of pedagogy, by looking at intersections between music jams and a classroom. How can we "jazz-up" our syllabus?

In this first part, our team explore decolonial practices around syllabus deconstruction and explores new pedagogies inspired by artists, jam sessions and other ways to work together that gives room to each player, but also improves our listening and our way to tune in. Building on lived experiences we also highlight some of the best classroom experiences that push the limits of student agency and create a new learning environment. Some of these explorations could potentially evolve the social dynamics, to become undisciplined and flatten awkward power dynamics in the classroom towards horizontality.

DPP Members hosting:

Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Chesline Pierre-Paul, Albane Gaudissart

Best Concordia Producer: Kris Millet

Editor: Connie Phung

Guests:

Matthias Mushinski: Matthias is a PhD student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia. His doctoral research is, above all else, a rigorous celebration of another way of being together that is offered in the social aesthetics of free jazz and its improvisatory protocols. In April 2022 he will begin a residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia where he will study under the direction of Linda Goode Bryant, Thomas Lax, Greg Tate and Arthur Jafa. An avid record collector and olfactory cosmonaut, Matthias spends his days meditating on themes such as beauty, (non)relationality, and the distinction--or lack thereof--between montage and ensemble. He is part of a listening collective that hosts a monthly radio show on n10.as titled Out From Outside.

This episode features DPPH’s founding members, Hone Mandefro and Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, along with one of the Hub’s current members, Albane Gaudissart, sharing some of the history on the beginnings of the Hub and how it came to be. The discussion is facilitated by Kris Millet from Best, Concordia.

Speakers:

Jamilah Dei-Sharpe is a second-generation Canadian-Black Jamaican Ghanaian women, who specializes in decolonial pedagogy, Black masculinity, critical race and gender studies. She offers strategies for community mobilization, participatory facilitation and sedimenting critical pedagogies from her experiences co-founding the NBGN and the DPPH, with public speaking engagements and multiple initiatives against anti-Black racism on Concordia campus.

Hone Mandefro is an Ethiopian international Ph.D. student that has over a decade of experience lecturing and training students in Social Policy and Social Work. As well as extensive experience in international political advocacy with the Ethiopian polity.

Albane Gaudissart is a French gender equality activist that has been working for eight years in Tanzania with the feminist, decolonial Non-For Profit organization 'TATU Project'; using her MA Anthropology degree to research the adoption of mobile technologies in the Tanzanian community Maasais. She has unmatched expertise in managing social-justice organizations and grassroots activism, whilst connecting the DPPPH to her international Tanzanian network.

Facilitator: Kris Millet, PhD student in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia.

Editor: Connie Phung, PhD student in Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia.

Reflections on Being Decolonial in a Digital World (Part 2)

Guest Speaker(s): Napatsi and Connie

This episode features the DPPH members and guest speakers Napatsi and Connie sharing their reflections on being decolonial in a digital world amid the COVID pandemic. The group share their lived experiences with race, pedagogy, and colonialism as they aspire to create de/colonial learning environments.

This episode proposes a reflections on race, racism, and being decolonial online during the COVID pandemic.

Reflections on Being Decolonial in a Digital World

Guest Speaker(s): Napatsi and Connie

This episode features the DPPH members and guest speakers Napatsi and Connie sharing their reflections on being decolonial in a digital world amid the COVID pandemic. The group share their lived experiences with race, pedagogy, and colonialism as they aspire to create de/colonial learning environments.

This episode presents a reflections on race, racism, and being decolonial online during the COVID pandemic.

Many thanks to the Concordia Ethnography Lab, the Concordia School of Graduate Studies, DPPH members Chesline Pierre-Paul, Albane Gaudissart, Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Connie Phung, Hone Mandefro, Best Concordia Produders Kris Millett who has overseen the project, Anne-marie Turcotte and Pauline Hoebanx.

This week, the Best C. podcast team let me (Anne-Marie) produce my own episode. Was this wise? We'll let you be the judge of that! In this episode, we are talking ontology(!) with the Thinking In SpaceTime working group at the Concordia Ethnography Lab and connecting this to an interview Johnny Bee did with PhD candidate and TAG member, Ida Marie Toft, about their work looking at interactive design and gaming. Featuring killer beats by Perv Club, check them out at https://pervclub.bandcamp.com/

The text discussed by Marie-Ève Drouin Gagné is : Medeiros, João Leonardo. Marx and the ontology of social being. available here: https://marxismocritico.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/medeiros_joao-ontology_and_epistemology_in_marx.pdf

the text discussed by Fintan Neylan is : da Silva, Denise Ferreira. Toward a black feminist poethics: the quest (ion) of blackness toward the end of the world. the black scholar, 2014, vol. 44, no 2, p. 81-97.

additional production on today's episode by: Pauline Hoebanx, Kris Millett, and John Bryans

special thanks to the Concordia School of Graduate Studies, The Office of the Dean of Arts and Science, The Milieu Institute, The Concordia Ethnography Lab, and The TAG Research Group

Following Johnny Bee's wonderful first episode of our "concept album", this episode, produced by Pauline Hoebanx, takes on the question of the value of knowledge. If you want to hear about the struggles of grad students figuring our their research topic, this is the episode for you! Master's student Samantha Ilacqa talks us through her change of thesis topic, and the Thinking In Space Time group discusses axiology.

The amazing 80's sounding techno music is brought to you by PervClub. You can find this track and much more at their BandCamp page: https://pervclub.bandcamp.com/

Grab a snack, sit back, and get ready to be transported to the strange land of graduate school.

Special thanks to the Concordia Ethnography Lab, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Science at Concordia, the Concordia School of Graduate Studies, and the Concordia Sociology and Anthropology Department.

Shout out to The Milieu Institute, and the TAG Research Group

Produced, edited, & hosted by Pauline Hoebanx.

Additional production by John Bryans, Anne Marie Turcotte, and Kris Millett.

Friends! Romans! Beautiful People! lend us your ears! it’s SEASON 3 Y’ALL!! and our first foray into long-form storytelling! this season is our “concept album” season, inspired by the Thinking In Space Time group at the Ethnolab. this episode, produced by Johnny Bee, is about combat sports and how race, gender, class, and injury can change your life. master’s student John Deidouss is our fabulous guest and our musical guest is papa Elie Deidouss! we’re so excited to bring you this season and we hope that you love it as much as we do.

special thanks to the Concordia Ethnography Lab, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Science at Concordia, the Concordia School of Graduate Studies, and the Concordia Sociology and Anthropology Department

shout out to The Milieu Institute, and the TAG Research Group

produced, edited, & hosted by John Bryans

produced by Pauline Hoebanx, Kris Millett, Anne Marie Turcotte, and John Deidouss

music by Elie Deidouss