back arrowView show

Sami Schalk on Disability and Black Women's Speculative Fiction


Episode description

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:

episodes iconMore Episodes

Anthony Romero on Sound and Socially Engaged Art

August 14th, 2019


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

Emilly Prado on Making Space for Creativity

July 31st, 2019


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

Amber Jamilla Musser on Valuing Embodied Knowledge

July 17th, 2019


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

Sandra Ruiz on Resetting the Colonial Clock

July 3rd, 2019


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

Tania Lizarazo on Listening and Learning Together

June 19th, 2019


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

Alix Olson on Transitioning from Performer to Professor

June 5th, 2019


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

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas on Leaving No One Behind

May 22nd, 2019


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 …

Dennis Norris II on QTPOC Literary Worlds

May 8th, 2019


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

Jenn M. Jackson on Black Feminist Love and Community Building

April 24th, 2019


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

Larisa Kingston Mann on DJ Dreams and Radical Publics

April 10th, 2019


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

Nadine Hubbs on Listening Queerly

March 27th, 2019


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

Marisol LeBrón on an Anti-Colonial Abolitionist Praxis

March 13th, 2019


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

Jade S. Sasser on Reproductive Justice and Climate Change

February 27th, 2019


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

Jessica Nydia Pabón-Colón on Women Graffiti Artists

February 13th, 2019


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 …

Alyshia Gálvez on NAFTA and Transnational Food Justice

January 30th, 2019


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 …

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui on Hawaiian Sovereignty

January 16th, 2019


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

Jenny L. Davis on Indigenous Language Revitalization

January 2nd, 2019


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

Jian Neo Chen on Trans of Color Art and Activism

December 19th, 2018


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

Aimee Bahng on Speculating from the Undercommons

December 5th, 2018


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

Craig Santos Perez on a Decolonial and Demilitarized Pacific

November 21st, 2018


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

Macarena Gómez-Barris on Fighting Extractive Capitalism

November 7th, 2018


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 …

Veronica Corzo-Duchardt on Art Between Worlds

October 24th, 2018


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

Imani Perry on Love as an Ethic

October 10th, 2018


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

Manuela Lavinas Picq on Indigenous Futures

September 26th, 2018


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

Francesca T. Royster on Writing Courageously

September 12th, 2018


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 …

Stacie Williams on the Radical Librarianiship

August 29th, 2018


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

Gayatri Gopinath on Queer Diasporic Aesthetics

August 15th, 2018


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 …

Heath Fogg Davis on Gender's Administration

August 1st, 2018


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 …

Aimi Hamraie on the Politics of Disability and Design

July 18th, 2018


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 …

Bianca Laureano on Feminist Afro-Latinx Sex Education

June 20th, 2018


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? …

Tavia Nyong'o on Revolutionary Queer Imaginaries

June 6th, 2018


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? …

Tina Campt on Listening to Images

May 16th, 2018


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 …

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha on Disability Justice

May 2nd, 2018


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

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha on Radical Memoir

April 18th, 2018


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 …

Manuel Cuellar on Dancing as Community Building

April 4th, 2018


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

Lynn Comella on Finding Your Voice and Knowing Your Audience

March 21st, 2018


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

Sara Tatyana Bernstein on Critical Public Scholarship

March 7th, 2018


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

Alice Y. Hom on Queer Public History

February 21st, 2018


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

Elizabeth J. Chin on Dancing Beyond Whiteness

January 31st, 2018


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

Shaka McGlotten on the Passion of Inquiry

January 10th, 2018


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

Yaba Blay on Everyday Black Girl Magic

December 13th, 2017


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 …

Elicia Gonzales on Latinx Reproductive Justice

November 29th, 2017


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

Karen Tongson on the Pleasures of Pop Culture

November 15th, 2017


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” …

Aileen Suzara on Filipino Food Activism and Eco-Education

November 1st, 2017


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

Lakshmi Ramgopal on Postcolonial Music and the Pull of History

October 18th, 2017


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 …

Adeline Koh on Feminist Entrepreneurship and Self-Care

October 4th, 2017


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 …

Yolanda Wisher on Poetry as Community Engagement

September 20th, 2017


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 …

Nia King on Supporting Queer and Trans Artists of Color

September 6th, 2017


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 …

Shanté Paradigm Smalls on Hip Hop's Queer Aesthetics

August 23rd, 2017


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 …

Tanisha C. Ford on Black Creative Genius

August 9th, 2017


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 …

Heath Fogg Davis on Transgender Discrimination

July 26th, 2017


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

Marcella Ernest on Native American Filmmaking and Podcasting

July 12th, 2017


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

Solomon Enos, Abigail Romanchak, and John Hina (Prime) on Native Hawaiian Food Security

June 28th, 2017


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

Rosanna Raymond, Léuli Māzyār Lunaʻi Eshrāghi, and Ricky Tagaban on Indigenous Sovereignty Movements

June 21st, 2017


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

Kālewa Correa, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, and Adriel Luis on Radical Curation

June 14th, 2017


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

Lila Sharif on the Settler Colonial Politics of Food

May 31st, 2017


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

Surbhi Malik on Diasporic Radio

May 24th, 2017


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

Emily Hue on Burmese Performance Art

May 17th, 2017


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

Leah Milne on the Good Trouble of Racial Justice

May 10th, 2017


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

Tara Fickle on Tarot in the Classroom

May 3rd, 2017


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

Karen Jaime on Queer Puerto Rican Slam Poetry

April 5th, 2017


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

In episode 34 of the Imagine Otherwise …

E. Patrick Johnson on Oral History and Creativity Rituals

March 22nd, 2017


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 …

Francisco Galarte on Chicanx Transgender Style

March 7th, 2017


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 …

Felami Burgess on Queer of Color Media Representation

February 22nd, 2017


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

Vince Schleitwiler on Afro–Asian Activist Coalitions

February 8th, 2017


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

Tala Khanmalek on Femme of Color Healing Justice

January 25th, 2017


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

Zach McDowell on Open Access Publishing

January 11th, 2017


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 …

Jessie Daniels and Polly Thistlethwaite on Being a Scholar in the Digital Era

December 28th, 2016


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

In episode 27 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast, host …

Mimi Khúc and Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis on Asian American Mental Health Activism

December 14th, 2016


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 …

Mimi Nguyen on Punk of Color Politics

November 30th, 2016


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 …

Amanda Phillips on Critical Digital Humanities

November 16th, 2016


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 …

André Pérez on Transgender Oral History

November 2nd, 2016


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

Wazhmah Osman on Autoethnography and Afghan Documentary Film

October 19th, 2016


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 …

Ronak Kapadia on Resisting Imperial Visuality

October 5th, 2016


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 on Whimsical Poetry as a Healing Tool for Trauma

September 21st, 2016


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

Karma Chávez on Queer Migration Politics

September 7th, 2016


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)?

Minal Hajratwala on How to Write Like a Unicorn

August 24th, 2016


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 on the ART of Infertility

August 17th, 2016


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

Katie Manthey on Fat Feminist Fashion Blogging

August 10th, 2016


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

Vicko Alvarez on Latina Feminist Comics

July 27th, 2016


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 …

Aishah Shahidah Simmons on Black Feminist Anti-Violence Activism

July 13th, 2016


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 …

Amy Sadao on Museums as the New Public Sphere

June 29th, 2016


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

Sarah Grey on Food as Community Building

June 15th, 2016


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 …

micha cárdenas on Wearable Technologies for Racial Justice

June 1st, 2016


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 on Queer, Feminist Japanese American Farming

May 18th, 2016


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

Simone Browne on the History of Anti-Black Surveillance

May 4th, 2016


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 …

Elizabeth Ellcessor on Disability Media Accessibility

April 20th, 2016


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

In episode 8 of the Imagine Otherwise …

andré carrington on Race in Science Fiction

April 6th, 2016


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

Eric Tang on the Cold War Origins of Refugee Policy

March 23rd, 2016


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

Lauren Rile Smith on Feminist Circus Art and Disability Body Love

March 9th, 2016


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 …

Margaret Rhee on Queer Feminist Robot Poetry

February 24th, 2016


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

Aymar Jean Christian on Queer and Trans of Color Media Production

February 10th, 2016


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

Sarah Sawyers-Lovett on Queer Southern Memoir Zines

January 27th, 2016


Host Cathy Hannabach interviews zine author and memoirist Sarah Sawyers-Lovett, who shares her experience writing memoirs about “growing up poor, queer, and lonely in a conservative small town in Virginia”; the power of …

Minh-Ha T. Pham on Asian Fashion Super Bloggers

January 13th, 2016


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

Cathy Hannabach Introduces the Imagine Otherwise Podcast

January 11th, 2016


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 …

Loading ...

Download the RadioPublic app for  FREE and never miss an episode.

Get it on Google PlayDownload on the App Store