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 cultural worker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha about the past successes and current challenges of the disability justice movement, how to create truly accessible performance and art spaces, and why helping survivors remake the world is how Leah imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/62-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha-part-2

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 transformative justice memoir Dirty River, how queer brown and disabled people write themselves into history, how you can bring ritual into your writing practice, and the value of letting your writing develop slooooowly—like a sourdough starter.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/61-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha-part-1

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 him create the communities he wants to inhabit, how Indigenous knowledge production provides a vital alternative to traditional universities, and why embodied vulnerability and the generative power of wounds is how Manuel imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/60-manuel-cuellar

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 fierce women and queers who jump started the feminist sex toy revolution, how scholars can up their public engagement game (not to mention why they need to), pragmatic advice for writing a crossover or trade book, and how feminist, fat-positive, and trans-justice sexual cultures are key to how Lynn imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/59-lynn-comella

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 started a digital magazine focused on fashion and politics, why public engagement and community projects are the future of education, and how becoming a public scholar is allowing Sara to imagine otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/58-sara-bernstein

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 trans people of color, what nonprofits and community organizations face in the coming years, and how self-care and community care are at the core of how Alice imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/57-alice-hom

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 about oneself, how dance is fantastic preparation for academic work, how she makes space for her whole self amidst a busy academic career, and how teaching kids how to make stuff is how she imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/56-elizabeth-chin

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 McGlotten about the passionate relationship we often have to the things that we study as well as how that always necessitates both desire and loss, how students can harness the power of Afrofuturism and speculation to combat white supremacy and climate change, and how queer and trans communities of color can use voguing, drag, and what Shaka calls "Black Data" to imagine and create new worlds.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/55-shaka-mcglotten

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 engaged approach to scholarship, how being an insider/outsider in the academy allows one to enact broad social change, the importance of meeting students where they're at, and how her celebration of everyday #BlackGirlMagic is how she imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/54-yaba-blay

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 Gonzales about how reproductive justice organizations can better incorporate intersectionality (and why they should), the role of Latinx and other queer of color movements in Philadelphia's radical history, why pleasure is a right not a privilege, and why Elicia puts listening at the center of how she imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/53-elicia-gonzales