Dan & Shah discuss creative inquiry as magic, creativity as self-making and world-making, anthropology and activism, decolonizing anthropology, queer black feminism, free-writing, autoethnography, and how creative or magical approaches to knowledge production can further empower marginalized communities.

Shah Noor Hussein, M.A. is a graduate of the CIIS Anthropology and Social Change Program where their emphasis included queer black feminism, alternative epistemologies, and liberatory pedagogies. As an artist, scholar, and activist, Shah values the roles of spirituality, embodiment, creativity, and pleasure within the writing process and the classroom. Often, experiential and integral learning practices are central to Shah’s teaching, learning and writing styles. Shah practices a teaching pedagogy that aims to hold a decolonized, racially unbiased, gender-inclusive, non-ableist, class conscious, spiritually welcoming space for all students with the ultimate goal of a career in education that is liberating for both students and professors.