Episode 021: Ronak Kapadia, author of Insurgent Aesthetics: Race, Security, and the Sensorial Life of Empire
Guest: Ronak Kapadia Ronak K. Kapadia is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and affiliated faculty in Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ronak is a cultural theorist of race, sex, and empire in the late 20th and early 21st...
Episode 020: April Lynn James, writer, performer, and designer of Whimsical Things
Guest: April Lynn James April Lynn James is a writer, performer and designer of whimsical things. Her research interests include 18th-century music, baroque dance, and operas composed by women. Madison Hatta is her alter ego who writes and declaims whimsical sonnets...
Episode 019: Karma Chávez, author of Queer Migration Politics
Guest: Karma Chávez Karma R. Chávez is an associate professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Texas – Austin. She is co-editor of Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (with Sara McKinnon, Robert Asen and...
Episode 018: Minal Hajratwala, poet, author, and unicorn of many colors
Minal Hajratwala is a unicorn of many colors, and a poet at heart. Her latest book of poetry, Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment, includes poems and the script for her theatrical poetry extravaganza, “Avatars: Gods for a New Millennium,” which was commissioned by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco for World AIDS Day. It is published by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, which publishes contemporary poetry books from India under a collective mentorship model. Hajratwala is also a writing coach and teacher helping other authors find their voice, particular queer writers and writers of color.
Episode 017: Elizabeth Walker and Maria Novotny, curators of The ART of Infertility
Guests: Elizabeth Walker and Maria Novotny Elizabeth Walker and Maria Novotny curate The ART of Infertility, a national art, oral history, and portraiture traveling exhibit. They met through their shared activist, professional, and personal work around infertility....
Episode 016: Katie Manthey, founder of Dress Profesh
Katie Manthey is an assistant professor of English and director of the Writing Center at Salem College. Her research and teaching are focused around cultural rhetorics, dress studies, and civic engagement. She is a body positive activist and moderates the website Dress Profesh, which highlights the ways that dress codes are racist, cissexist, ageist, and classist.
Episode 015: Vicko Alvarez, creator of ScholaR Comics
Guest: Vicko Alvarez Vicko Alvarez is the creator of ScholaR Comics and CholActivist—two comics projects inspired by Vicko’s life, Latina activism and chola culture. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas and currently living on the south side of Chicago, Vicko is one of...
Episode 014: Aishah Shahidah Simmons, filmmaker and director of NO! The Rape Documentary
Guest Aishah Shahidah Simmons chats about her film NO!: The Rape Documentary, being an un-traditional academic, and her new project LoveWITHAccountability, a multi-media campaign for child sexual abuse and incest survivors of African descent to speak out in solidarity and to share their testimonies and solutions for creating accountability with love.
Episode 013: Amy Sadao, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art
Amy Sadao is an art director, art writer, juror, and lecturer. Sadao advocates for art and culture’s essential role in civil society, and has been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and on the BBC, CNN.com, Channel 4, CBC, NY1, and WXPN.