Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews zine author and memoirist Sawyer Lovett, who shares his experience writing memoirs about “growing up poor, queer, and lonely in a conservative small town in Virginia”; the power of zines in queer and trans youth cultures; and how he's produced his two podcasts, Queering the Shelves and Book Jawn.

Show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/2-sawyer-lovett

How can writers better translate their work for varied genres and audiences? How are Black and Brown artists challenging the presumed whiteness of particular cities and spaces? What kind of world would be possible if everyone had the time and resources to pursue creative projects?

In episode 94 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach interviews journalist and educator Emilly Prado about the complicated politics of assimilation, how to shift your voice when writing across genres and formats, the ways Latinx DJs are cultivating new music spaces, and why documenting the vibrant Black and Brown arts and activist scenes in Portland is how Emilly imagines otherwise.

TRANSCRIPT & SHOW NOTES: https://ideasonfire.net/94-emilly-prado/

How does speculative fiction provide us models for more queer, just, and creative futures? How are Black women novelists helping us reimagine what (dis)ability and embodiment mean? What is missing from our conversations in popular representation, disability studies, and Black studies?

Episode 66 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast is the first in a three part miniseries that was recorded live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at a recent gathering of interdisciplinary cultural studies scholars. The three authors featured in this miniseries—Sami Schalk, Aimi Hamraie, and Heath Fogg Davis—have recently published cultural studies books that have made big splashes beyond the academy in the areas of speculative fiction, fan cultures, urban planning and design, law, and public policy. These authors’ books show how the intersections of disability, race, gender, and sexuality have shaped everything from sci-fi/fantasy novels to police violence, curb cut activism, urban architecture, and the design of public restrooms.

In this episode, host Cathy Hannabach and scholar Anastasia Kārkliņa talk with Sami Schalk about Sami's new book Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction.

Transcript and show notes: http://ideasonfire.net/podcast/66-sami-schalk/

Trapeze artist, archivist, and poet Lauren Rile Smith shares her experience directing the feminist and queer circus arts troupe Tangle Movement Arts, how disability and chronic pain shape her relationship to her dancing body, and the politics of a life onstage.

Show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/5-lauren-rile-smith

We’ve all experienced a LOT of change over the past year and a half. Many of the things we assumed to be stable anchors suddenly turned out not to be, as everything from the global economy and education to politics and media were irrevocably transformed.

Many with privilege have responded to such upheaval by demanding a swift and complete return to the same capitalist normal that unevenly organized life in the before times.

But those for whom the old normal was a source of oppression rather than comfort have had a different reaction to such changes. Folks have instead invested in practices like mutual aid, unlearning, and interdependency, all which provide models for more just social foundations.

In episode 138 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews gender, sexuality, and ethnic studies scholar and professor Priya Kandaswamy. Priya has long been fascinated with how institutions and individuals shape and reshape one another in the context of power.

As she details in their conversation, Priya’s career shifted dramatically earlier this year. In March 2021, one full year after COVID-19 had forced major shutdowns across the US, Priya’s employer, Mills College, announced that fall 2021 would be its last year admitting new students and the beloved liberal arts college in Oakland, California, would completely close by 2023. As a result, all faculty and staff would thus need to find other employment.

Priya shares how personal upheavals (like a career change) combined with collective upheavals (like a pandemic) provide glimpses into a new normal, one that is organized around permanent change.

Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as prison abolition movements, radical herbalism, feminist of color welfare histories, and the mycorrhizal bonds between trees and fungi, Priya explains how she is learning to embrace permanent transformation as a way to individually and collectively build new worlds.

Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/138-priya-kandaswamy