Imagine Otherwise by Ideas on Fire

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews Black visual studies scholar Jasmine Nichole Cobb about haptic blackness and the cultural politics of Black hair in …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews women’s and gender studies professor Mairead Sullivan about the histories and futures of lesbian feminism.

Mairead …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews ethnic studies and women and gender studies professor Josen Masangkay Diaz about US–Philippine relations during the …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews anthropologist Erin Durban about the past and present relationship between the United States and Haiti as it shapes …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews feminist studies and ethnic studies professor Jennifer Lynn Kelly about her new book Invited to Witness.

In their conversation, Cathy and Jennifer talk about the temporality and pace of …

Cathy Hannabach interviews digital media scholar Josef Nguyen about the promises and perils of flexible planning, why cultural anxieties over …

The massive changes we’ve collectively experienced over the past two years of a global pandemic have caused many of us to ask some big questions …

We’re reaching that time of year when the days shorten and we start to wonder if we’ll get everything done we wanted to this year. In this season, many of us yearn for more balance in our daily routines and the second …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews digital studies scholar and professor Catherine Knight Steele, whose work reveals the central role Black women and …

Even before the global COVID-19 pandemic, access to reliable, high-performance broadband internet was a necessity for many of us to be able to …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and media studies scholar Sandra Ristovska about the complex ethical, political, and legal relationship …

Publishing plays a central role in higher education, primarily through the hiring, tenure, and promotion process. Because of this, transforming …

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 …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews filmmaker and hip-hop scholar Mark Villegas, who has built his career foregrounding the power of collective abundance.

Community building is a cornerstone of progressive social and intellectual movements. Resisting capitalist individualism, we know how vital social bonds are in sustaining our identities, our dreams, and even our very …

Centuries of Black feminist intellectuals have demonstrated how knowledge production is always deeply political, revealing whose labor and lives we …

Movements organized around disability justice, prison and police abolition, queer and trans feminism, and economic justice have long shown how …

Over the past few years, we’ve seen more and more vibrant intersectional and interdisciplinary cultural production get the attention it so richly …

Building an abolitionist university or museum requires more than just updating some policies. It requires rethinking from the ground up what we want …

As scholars, we often like to think we have everything under control. We work hard to meet deadlines, fulfill our responsibilities, and get …

Spring is normally a time of emergence and inspiration but many scholars, artists, and organizers are struggling after a year spent inside and a …

How can looking to the past enliven the present and inspire the future? And how can we foment that inspiration in our daily practices and habits?

In episode 129 of Imagine Otherwise, host Cathy Hannabach interviews …

For those of us in the social justice-oriented interdisciplines like gender studies, ethnic studies, and disability studies, our desire to make real …

Our systems for tracking and making progress on our goals are often deeply personal and idiosyncratic. How we organize our days to find motivation changes over time as well, as our lives and our worlds shift in ways we …

Even our best-laid plans go awry sometimes and require us to adjust on the fly. Whether it’s throwing out our timeline for publication or experimenting with a new teaching technique, adapting our plans to meet the …

It’s the beginning of a new year and normally that would mean a flurry of ambitious new projects, goals, and plans to achieve them both. But ten …

Despite the cliché, 2020 really is one for the history books. Between a global pandemic disproportionately harming communities of color, racist and …

The collaborative art of curation is one that takes a complex mixture of confidence and humility. Curators need confidence in their choices and …

Women and girls are constantly bombarded with messages to be more confident.

Although such advice might be useful for some, it doesn’t account for …

How does disability justice provide tools for building more sustainable social relations and practices, both during and beyond the current pandemic?

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The dance world and academia are two creative industries known for innovative thinking and vibrant collaborations. But they also share a …

What do politics, community, and artistic resistance look like beyond the terrestrial? What would happen if we took them to the sky?

In episode 119 …

For those of us who thrive on doing all the things, it is incredibly easy to put off rest and self-care—at least until we hit burnout. Scholars, …

How might the history of Black women’s creative homemaking and citizenship practices help us navigate our current political and cultural moment? What …

One of the biggest concerns right now for academics who are also parents is figuring out how to juggle education for both their students and their children. Many K–12 and higher education institutions have moved to …

How can we build accessible online courses in the middle of a pandemic?

More than just a call to reproduce in-person teaching in digital …

What role can performance play in racial justice struggles? How can theater help us remake the world?

The past several months have made even more …

The mediated politics of identity have animated movements as diverse as anticolonial nationalisms, multiple forms of feminism, transgender and …

What would happen if we threw out the boundaries between academic disciplines? How would our collective histories, conflicts, and corporealities …

How does cultural heritage provide us with the tools to shape what collective freedom looks, sounds, and feels like? This question and its political …

Given everything that’s going on in the world right now, writing is the last thing on many people’s minds. Amidst the uncertainty, anxiety, and grief, many of our writing projects have taken a back seat to other more …

Among the many effects of the recent pandemic and social distancing practices is that most of us find ourselves spending more and more time with screens and smart devices as our daily lives move even further online. The …

How does a reproductive justice approach to healthcare change the way we understand childbirth and pregnancy? How can we draw on our holistic, …

It’s commonplace to hear claims that in our current historical moment science has become politicized, as climate crises, vaccines, and genetic …

What role have Black cartoonists played in the history of superheroes, weekend newspaper funnies, and graphic biographies? How have they harnessed …

How can putting marginalized people at the very center of design and technology change the world for the better? This is the question that has …

What happens when a biomedical engineer and a literary studies scholar set out to produce a podcast about academia, culture, and social justice …

What is at stake when we choose to write in one genre over another? Why does our name shape how our work is taken up in the world? How might we …

Host Cathy Hannabach interviews podcaster, travel writer, and journalist Amy Lam about the power of feminist podcasting, how histories of race and …

Why are interdisciplinary methodologies so important for telling American Indian histories? How does Indigenous documentary filmmaking and television …

This is the 100th episode of Imagine Otherwise! Host Cathy Hannabach reflects on the past 3 years of interviewing artists, filmmakers, chefs, …

How are both our bodies and our creative work haunted by history's ghosts? How does place and historical geography transform the work we do in the classroom? How might poetry and other public intellectual work transform …

How can radical librarianship forge solidarity across the university's faculty, students, librarians, and greater community? How does “vocational …

How can thinking with the sea shifting the foundations of humanities research? How does the ocean challenge terrestrial bias in standpoint …

How are Black women artists harnessing texture, transparency, and bafflement to forge forms of belonging beyond the nation? How might the …

How can we bring socially engaged art into the classroom without losing its community focus? What are the possibilities and limitations of building …

How can writers better translate their work for varied genres and audiences? How are Black and Brown artists challenging the presumed whiteness of …

How might the abstraction of aesthetics help us think through the fleshy materiality of race and gender? How would valuing bodily knowledge transform …

How are artists, activists, and communities resetting the colonial clock? What does it mean to reinterpret political actions as insurgent …

What does it mean to value storytelling as a form of knowledge production? How can we develop collaborative research projects with the communities to …

Why did so many feminist performers and artists of a certain generation transition into academic careers? How can scholars and activists mobilize …

How can children's literature help us make sense of an ever-changing world? Why is speculative fiction having such a moment in contemporary popular …

How might difference be reframed as avenue toward sharing collective power instead of a source of conflict? How can the literary world better …

How are Black feminists challenging tired savior narratives in favor of robust and fully human forms of admiration? How can scholars unlearn some of …

How do radical music cultures help us rethink differently copyright and global cultural production? What does it mean to put theory and creative …

How might we interrogate the sociocultural dimensions of music through queer, class-conscious, and anti-racist frameworks? How can teachers of all …

How do punitive governance like policing and natural disasters like Hurricane Maria reveal the ongoing colonial relationship between the US and …

How do the racist and misogynist histories of population control shape current debates over climate change? How is the reproductive justice movement …

How are women shaking up the global hip hop graffiti scene? What does social justice curation look like? How does feminist graffiti offer vibrant insights into more creative and just worlds?

In episode 82 of the Imagine …

What is the link between global trade policies and the food on our plates? How can scholars of globalization and migration translate their work so as …

How can independent media amplify Indigenous politics? What do the politics of land, gender, and sexuality tell us about the paradox of Hawaiian …

What does Indigenous language revitalization look like in our contemporary digital age? How might language learning and capacity building work …

How can a transnational, trans of color aesthetics remake the world? How has transgender studies changed what academic publishing looks like in the …

How might speculative fiction help educators teach gender and ethnic studies to their students? What would it mean to reimagine the Pacific in an …

How might the world be transformed by honoring Pacific experiences? What can communal storytelling teach us about decolonial ways of knowing? How can …

What new pathways emerge when we theorize from the undercurrents? How can art challenge the corrosive logics of racial and extractive capitalism? What kind of world can we build by thinking beyond disciplinary …

How do we organize truly intersectional artistic collaboration across time and space? What might running a small business teach us about the creative …

What tools does feminism provide for dismantling domination? What might be possible when our work aligns with what nourishes our spirit? How might we …

How do Indigenous forms of governance provide models for organizing beyond the state? How might scholars better work alongside of and in the best …

How does music enable us to dream up a different world? What does respecting your audience look like as a writer? How can we empower young people access to tell stories that matter to them?

In episode 71 of the Imagine …

What politics shape information management and access to knowledge? What are the social and environmental implications of ubiquitous digital …

How might a queer lens unearth different conceptions of space and place? How do queer diasporic artists use aesthetics to forge transnational connections? How might radical relationality provide a model for queer ethics …

Do we really need sex classification in our education system, our public restrooms, or our government IDs? How can we alleviate some of the harm that trans and gender-nonconforming people who don't fit into a binary …

How has the concept of Universal Design and its application to architectural practice changed over the years? Who is left out of design practices that are meant for “everyone”? What if the design industry actually …

How does speculative fiction provide us models for more queer, just, and creative futures? How are Black women novelists helping us reimagine what …

How might we create a world where intersectional feminist, sex-positive sex education is the norm? What new avenues of liberation are opened up when we move past a theory vs. practice dichotomy in sexuality education? …

What is the negative capacity of art and how does it let us imagine otherwise? What tools does queer of color critique offer for building new worlds? …

What does it mean to listen to images? Why do images seem to be haunted by their contexts of production? How are marginalized communities using the intimacy of images to build new ways of relating to each other and the …

What is the difference between disability justice and disability rights? How can we make our social justice movement spaces accessible to and led by …

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 …

What complexities arise when dance becomes a site of national identity? What kind of cultural knowledges do we carry in our bodies and perform …

What tensions arise when sex-positive feminists and queer folk get into the sex toy business? How can scholars get their institutions to recognize …

How can we dismantle hierarchies between students and professors in higher education? What does critically engaged public scholarship look like? Why …

How can we make queer histories accessible beyond the academy? What might those histories teach us about how social justice organizations can sustain …

How can we imagine and create speculative futures beyond whiteness? What can anthropology teach us about design and technology? And how might …

What are the emotional and political stakes of knowledge production? How can queer and trans communities of color reject transparency to better …

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 …

How can we put reproductive justice in conversation with racial and economic justice? How are queer Latinx communities and other queers of color …

What can popular music teach us about migration and cultural change? How can pleasure and joy help us redefine what it means to be a “serious” …

What role does food play in building sustainable communities? How might cultural traditions challenge us to think differently about the environment …

What happens when we bring traditional Indian musical traditions together with electronic music and Riot Grrrl? How do marginalized communities use spiritual practices like tarot to envision other ways of being? How can …

How can we think about skincare as a way to care for ourselves rather than fixing imperfections? How can we reimagine beauty routines as community building practices? What does it mean to create a company grounded in …

How can poetry connect to and grow with a neighborhood? How can cultural workers blend their academic and creative efforts to better serve both their …

How can we better support the work of queer and trans artists of color? How can self-publishing create cultural conversations by and for marginalized …

How can Shambhala Buddhist meditation and other body practices help writers manage stress and express their ideas? How might queer hip hop artists and forms provide models for worldmaking? How can Afro-pessimism and …

How do Black art and creativity help imagine new worlds? How does fashion help us think about the intersection of power and desire? What can we do to …

What if we got rid of gender or sex classification in public restrooms, sports, college admissions, and government IDs? How does transgender …

How can scholar-artists best balance their scholarly and creative endeavors? Can sound media and podcasting make exclusive spaces more accessible? …

How can shared space drive artistic, healing collaborations?How does Indigenous art intervene in processes of consumerism, global warming, and the …

How can shared space drive artistic, healing collaborations? In what ways does Indigenous art engage critically with global warming, gender identity, …

What would happen if we designed art exhibitions around social justice community organizing principles? How can collaboration between artists, …

What does the rising popularity of the olive mean for global consumers, producers, and resisters? How do our intimate connections with food build …

How does place-making help migrants understand and disrupt racial narratives? What role does mentoring play in academic progression and in everyday …

How are performance artists in the Burmese diaspora resisting notions of indebtedness and redefining narratives of political oppression and …

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

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

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

In episode 34 of the Imagine Otherwise …

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 …

How can cultural texts help us make sense of race and (trans)gender together? What role does fashion play in culture, resistance, and academia? How …

What does truly diverse media representation look like, and how can transmedia help folks contribute? How can scholars, artists, and academics use …

How have US imperialism and nationalism informed perceptions of racial identity? What can we gain from strengthening the relationship between …

How have colonialism and empire contributed to modern-day science and medicine? How can work from women of color feminisms and healing justice …

How is the digital landscape changing, and what does this mean for academia? How can digital technologies transform how we teach and how we think …

How are digital technologies, including open access publishing, transforming higher education?

In episode 27 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host …

What does wellness and unwellness look like in the context of Asian America? In the context of academia? How can we transform our spaces to allow for …

What strings are attached to the "gift of freedom" that the United States grants refugees? How can zines, punk, and tarot serve as methods and mediums for social justice work? And what do movie stars and Buddhist nuns …

How can digital media transform the way we organize, teach, and relate to our bodies and the world?

In episode 24 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host Cathy Hannabach chats with guest Amanda Phillips about the …

How can trans people of color own their own stories? What's the right balance between depicting the systemic violence a community faces and …

How can we tell a story that is ours but also belongs to millions of others? How can documentary film and engaged scholarship portray the realities …

How is war felt through the body? Why are so many long-time antiwar and anticolonial activists turning to healing and body-based practices like …

April Lynn James addresses how storytelling can help trauma survivors heal, the role of poetry in racial justice struggles, crafting an altac career …

How are gender and sexuality implicated in the immigration process? Are there concrete steps that academics can take to engage with the broader community? What are the benefits of sound-based media (like this podcast)?

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How can publishers promote voices from the margins, and how can writers do their part in insisting that their voices are heard? For authors who write …

Elizabeth Walker and Maria Novotny discuss popular representations of infertility, the common misogynist refrain that tells women they need to “fix” …

Katie Manthey talks about feminist fat fashion blogging, running a website about body positivity, and the racially gendered politics of what counts …

Vicko Alvarez chats about using comics in the K-12 classroom and how she drew on her life to create her two comic series—ScholaR Comics and …

How can artists engage with the academy to share cultural work and activism? How is education a form of activism?

In episode 14 of the Imagine …

What role do art museums and exhibition institutions play in creating political dialogue? How is highlighting work by and about marginalized …

Editor and food writer Sarah Grey talks about using food to create community, editing for social justice, socialist feminist approaches to child care, the tastiness and challenges of food writing, and her weekly radical …

What happens when we reimagine the uses of science and technology in the name of marginalized groups? Can social justice goals be at once theoretical …

Nikiko Masumoto shares how women of color feminism informs how she runs the Masumoto Family Farm, the rich history of Japanese American farmers in …

How is the history of slavery tied to modern-day surveillance systems? Is surveillance always a negative term? How can a gendered lens change the way …

How can media producers address the varied ways people with diverse disabilities use media and technology?

In episode 8 of the Imagine Otherwise …

What role does race play in imaginative literary genres like science fiction and fantasy? Can we broaden the confines of what we consider political …

What can we learn about structural oppression through the analysis of one person's story? How can collaboration transform the way we make decisions …

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 …

Poet and gender studies scholar Margaret Rhee talks about the magic that can happen when one brings art, activism, and academia together; her new …

What are the benefits of indie television production for women, queers, and trans people of color? How is the slow speed of collaborative work …

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 …

How can interdisciplinary scholars decolonize the fashion industry? How does digital fashion labor build on older forms of racially gendered …

In the pilot episode, host Cathy Hannabach introduces the Imagine Otherwise podcast, which showcases the people and projects bridging art, activism, and academia to build better worlds. Episodes offer in-depth …