Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla on Cite Black Women
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
Release Date: 06/09/2021
Raven Maragh-Lloyd on Black Networked Resistance
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
How can communities creatively adapt and reshape online practices to forge resilient digital publics? In episode 162 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews media studies scholar Raven Maragh-Lloyd about the historical contours of Black digital resistance. The Ideas on Fire team was honored to work with Raven on her new book , which is an insightful analysis of how Black technology users adapt and reshape resistance strategies and forge Black publics in the digital age. The book is out now from the University of California Press. In their conversation, Raven and Cathy chat about...
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Natalie Zervou on Dance in the Age of Austerity
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
The relationship between dance and politics has long been a complex one. In moments of national and international crisis, artists are often at the center of resistance movements, and the embodied knowledges honed by dancers, choreographers, and performers can become key survival techniques for diverse communities. In episode 161 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews dance studies scholar and Ideas on Fire author Natalie Zervou, author of the new book . The book is out now from the University of Michigan Press, and it offers a deep dive into how the Greek dance world and arts...
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Amber Rose González, Felicia Montes, and Nadia Zepeda on Mujeres de Maiz
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
In episode 160 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Amber Rose González, Felicia Montes, and Nadia Zepeda—three legendary feminist artists, activists, and scholars from the genre-defying, transnational feminist of color collective Mujeres de Maiz. Amber, Felicia, and Nadia are also editors of a new book called Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis, which was recently published by the University of Arizona Press. In their conversation, Amber, Felicia, and Nadia share their journey with Mujeres de Maiz and the collective...
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Erin McElroy on Silicon Valley Imperialism
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
How has the Silicon Valley form of technocapitalism shaped geographies around the world? In episode 159 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author, University of Washington geography professor, and housing justice activist Erin McElroy about the global reach of technocapitalism. Erin is the author of the new Duke University Press book Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times, which is a fascinating multi-sited ethnography of the dispossessions wrought by Silicon Valley on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In their...
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Juan Llamas-Rodriguez on the Visual Politics of Border Tunnels
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
How do media representations of US–Mexico border tunnels shape immigration discourse, public policy, and anti-immigrant violence? To help us think through how these tunnels are represented and often overrepresented in US media, in episode 158 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Ideas on Fire author Juan Llamas-Rodriguez about his new book . For all of their visual obscurity and inaccessibility, tunnels are hypervisible in media representations not only of the US–Mexico border region but also the bodies—both real and imagined—that are associated with the...
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Tamara Kneese on Death in the Digital Platform Age
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
In episode 157 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews media scholar and Ideas on Fire author Tamara Kneese about the complex relationship between Big Tech and mortality, specifically how digital media platforms mediate our experiences of death. Tamara is a senior researcher and project director of Data & Society’s AIMLab, and her new book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond was recently published by Yale University Press. In their conversation, Tamara and Cathy chat about how platform economies built around planned obsolescence shape our...
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Nicosia Shakes on Black Women's Activist Theater
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
In episode 156 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews , whose creative and scholarly work celebrates the intertwining of political activism and performance across the African diaspora. Nicosia's play Afiba and Her Daughters, which offers an intergenerational narrative of Jamaican herstory, premiered at the Rites and Reason Theatre in Providence. Nicosia’s new book analyzes the work of four contemporary women-led theater groups and projects with a focus on how their activist productions take on gender injustice, racism, gang and state violence, and economic inequality. In...
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Meryl Alper on Autistic Kids’ Digital Media
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
In episode 155 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews disability media studies scholar Meryl Alper. Meryl is the author of 3 books about how kids with disabilities use digital technologies, including her most recent book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age. Kids Across the Spectrums is out now from MIT Press and it is the first book-length ethnography of the digital lives of diverse young people on the autism spectrum. In their conversation, Cathy and Meryl chat about how autistic and neurodivergent youth and their families resist popular...
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Kristie Soares on Joy in Latinx Media
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
In episode 154 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews performance artist and gender studies scholar Kristie Soares about the political power of pleasure, laughter, and joy in Latinx media. Kristie’s new book Playful Protest: The Political Work of Joy in Latin Media has chapters about gozando in salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party, choteo in the comedy ¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?, azúcar in the life and death of Celia Cruz, dale as Pitbull’s signature affect, and silliness in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s interventions into political violence. In the episode,...
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Cynthia Franklin on Narrative and Activist Politics
Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire
Host Cathy Hannabach interviews literature professor Cynthia Franklin about the politics of life writing. Cynthia’s new book Narrating Humanity: Life Writing and Movement Politics from Palestine to Mauna Kea traces the complex ways activists, artists, cultural producers, and scholars engage genres like memoir and autobiography to resist racial capitalism, imperialism, heteropatriarchy, and climate change. In their conversation, Cynthia and Cathy chat about why narrative plays such a large role in defining who gets to count as human and how that narrative definition shapes everything...
info_outlineCenturies of Black feminist intellectuals have demonstrated how knowledge production is always deeply political, revealing whose labor and lives we value. Publicly citing and generously engaging with the contributions that others have made to our thinking is a crucial way we remake the world.
In episode 135 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews Christen A. Smith, Dána-Ain Davis, and Sameena Mulla, the three co-editors of the recent ground-breaking special issue of Feminist Anthropology, which focuses on the Cite Black Women movement that honors Black women’s transnational intellectual production.
The Ideas on Fire team has been privileged to copyedit the Feminist Anthropology journal from its inception, and the Cite Black Women special issue is a superb illustration of the powerful political and ethical transformations this journal and the Cite Black Women movement bring to academic publishing and everyday life.
In the conversation, Christen, Dána, Sameena, and Cathy discuss the pleasures and challenges of overhauling academic publishing workflows and norms so that they can embody an intersectional, transnational feminist praxis.
They also chat about what it means to honor our intellectual and communal forbearers, which this special issue does in the form of a tribute to the late Dr. Leith Mullings from colleagues, friends, comrades, and former students whose intellectual and personal lives were forever changed through her lifelong commitment to racial, economic, and gender justice.
And finally, they close out the conversation with reflections on why making room for marginalized people to speak, write, and publish is a key way we all think and live knowledge production otherwise.
Transcript and show notes: https://ideasonfire.net/135-smith-davis-mulla