Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

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 Pacific American Museum's innovative 'Ae Kai Culture Lab exhibit in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/42-enos-romanchak-hina

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 experiences working with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Museum's innovative 'Ae Kai Culture Lab exhibit in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/41-raymond-eshraghi-tagaban

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 Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, and Adriel Luis, who share their experiences curating the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Museum's innovative 'Ae Kai Culture Lab exhibit in Honolulu, Hawai'i.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/40-correa-davis-luis

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 thinking about their own food histories, the complex dynamics of ethical consumerism and where we get our food, and decolonization as an embodied, everyday form of imagining otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/39-lila-sharif

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 migrants employ, how she mentors students to consider their whole selves even while in academia, how she went from hosting an American music radio show in India to hosting an Indian music radio show in the US, and how public projects like radio and activism inform all of her scholarly work and taught her how to both identify and resist colonial legacies.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/38-surbhi-malik

How are performance artists in the Burmese diaspora resisting notions of indebtedness and redefining narratives of political oppression and liberation? How can performance art and organic networking interrupt the academic-industrial complex?

In episode 37 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Emily Hue discuss how artists in the Burmese diaspora navigate the intersecting violences in the asylum and refugee process, why graduate students and other academics should explore multiple outlets for their work beyond the academic monograph, what luxury hair markets and oil spill cleanup have to do with one another, and Emily's contribution to the giant wish list we've been compiling on this podcast as guests imagine and create better worlds.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/37-emily-hue

What is metafiction, and how can it serve as a tool for confronting power dynamics? Can incorporating unconventional genres in curriculum teach students critical thinking skills?

In episode 36 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Leah Milne discuss how metafictional narratives by authors of color can provide a pedagogy of discomfort, how comics and graphic novels can spur the "good trouble" of social justice activism, and how she uses the classroom to teach radical empathy.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/36-leah-milne

What do game studies, literary studies, and Asian American studies have in common? How can immersive role play games help us better understand racial formation and resistance?

In episode 35 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Tara Fickle talk about why games and literature are such fruitful sites for understanding racial formation; what it was like for Tara to design and build her own video game about Japanese-American internment during World War II; how emerging scholars can gain the technological skills they need to create public, multimedia work; and how Tara uses cultural forms like tarot and comics in her teaching to get students to imagine different worlds.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/35-tara-fickle

How can poetry translate or disrupt political dialogue? In what way is classroom teaching a performance?

In episode 34 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach and guest Karen Jaime discuss the history of queer and trans* Puerto Rican poets in New York City, how professors can use the classroom as both an artistic and activist space, how poets paradoxically use language to bust through language barriers, poetry as consciousness raising, and why queer and trans artists of color turn to multimedia and transdisciplinary work to forge social justice movements.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/34-karen-jaime

To what extent should we embrace our personal connections to our work? How much should we let our audience influence our work? What are the best ways to collaborate in academia and performance?

In episode 33 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, Cathy Hannabach interviews E. Patrick Johnson about his creative process, how he translates scholarly ideas into artistic work and vice versa, how Black gay men and women are crafting community-based oral histories, and how artistic and scholarly collaboration is a key way he imagines otherwise.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/33-e-patrick-johnson