AGITATE Now!
A Collective Engagement with Critical Kashmir Studies
The Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (New York: Routledge, 2022) edited by Mona Bhan, Haley Duschinski & Deepti Misri By A. Adams, Missy Drew, Fatemeh Nasr Esfahani, Leith Ghuloum, Anna Goorevich, Natasha Hernández, Nina Kaushikkar, Vaishnavi Kollimarla, Pauline Maison-Dessemme, Nada Mohamed, Tahmina Sobat, Allie Thek, Nithya Rajan, and Richa Nagar Let me cry out…
When the functional is political is personal …Witnessing the many battles of Geeli Pucchi’s Bharati Mandal
By Drishadwati Bargi In Indian cinema, we have encountered morally ambiguous lovers before. In Vishal Bharadwaj’s 2004 classic Maqbool, we see a relentlessly scheming Nimmi (played by the inimitable Tabu), flirting and courting with her lover/patron’s aide, treacherously aiding the former’s murder, and unleashing a tragedy that ultimately consumes everyone. We have seen the same…
Black Feminism and Hip Hop Pedagogy: A Workshop by Ruth Nicole Brown
As part of AGITATE! Journal’s Feminist Knowledge Production Series, we invited Ruth Nicole Brown—scholar, artist, and member of AGITATE! Editorial Board— to conduct a workshop titled Black Feminism and Hip Hop Pedagogy on March 23, 2023. In the workshop, whose recording we present here, Professor Brown draws on her research on Black girls’ lived experiences…
I want to tell a story: An (alleged) exercise in knowledge production
By A Adams For the record, this is an attempt at engaging knowledge production through non-academic means, produced for a Feminist Knowledge Production Seminar taught by Richa Nagar at the University of Minnesota in Spring 2023. In it, I ask: how do we produce knowledge from precarity? What actually generates the means by which we…
Poetry, Academia, and Feminist Knowledge-Making: A Workshop with Celina Su
As part of AGITATE! Journal’s Feminist Knowledge Production Series, we invited Celina Su—scholar, poet, and member of AGITATE! Editorial Board— to conduct a workshop titled Poetry, Academia, and Feminist Knowledge-Making on March 30, 2023. In the workshop, whose recording we present here, Su discusses poetry as mode of social inquiry and as a vehicle for…
Dear Rohith…
By Ponni Arasu This letter is part of Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: A Multipart Series On Remembering, Retelling, And Dreaming For Justice co-convened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu. I dedicate this piece to Radhika Vemula, Rohith Vemula’s mother and to A. Mangai aka V. Padma, my mother. Two women who fight for…
For Life, When Death Crumbles
By Sima Shakhsari Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in the hospital on September 16, 2022, three days after being arrested by the Iranian Guidance Patrol (also known as the “morality police” in English ) for her alleged “improper hijab.” Her murder became the mobilizing cry for the massive protests that have…
On the protests in Iran
By Sima Shakhsari 23 September 2022 I got an interview request by a journalist from Switzerland and these are the questions: “My main question is why autocrats, including the Iranian regime, fear women and queer movements/activism and perceive them as a threat to their survival. Why is there a need to control women’s bodies? What…
AGITATE! As Creative Commons: AGITATE! Editorial Collective Speaks to Nancy Sims
This interview was compiled by Nancy Sims, Copyright Program Librarian at the University of Minnesota for Against the Grain. It was published in the Charleston Hub on November 30, 2021. AGITATE! Editorial Collective members Keavy McFadden, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer, Emina Bužinkić, Nithya Rajan, Sima Shakhsari, and Samira Musleh participated in the interview. Introducing AGITATE!…
Demolition Politics in India: An Anti-Muslim, Anti-Dissent Strategy
By AGITATE! Editorial Collective In the past few months, the Indian state under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has weaponized yet another mechanism of terror as part of its virulent anti-Muslim pogrom: the demolition of Muslim homes. Since coming to power in 2014, but especially after it was reelected in the 2019 elections, the BJP…