Madhumita Dutta
agitatejournalMadhumita Dutta is an assistant professor at the Ohio State University since 2017. Madhumita completed her PhD in Labour Geography from the Department of Geography, University of Durham, UK. Prior to her academic career, Madhumita had been an activist for over sixteen years in India, working with communities resisting takeover of their natural resources and…
The Power of ‘Ordinary Conversations’: A Review of Madhumita Dutta’s ‘Mobile Girls Koottam’
agitatejournalBy Nithya Rajan Feminist research is increasingly moving towards collaborative research methodologies that center the experiences, voices, and knowledge of the people being written about and disrupt the researcher-researched dynamic through a dialogic process. Even so, very rarely are we presented with unanalysed narratives and stories of those whose lives we seek to understand. Madhumita …
Tamar Shirinian
agitatejournalTamar Shirinian is a cultural anthropologist whose work explores the connections between sexuality, gender, intimacy, and political economy. Her research and many of her political and creative commitments are in the Republic of Armenia. Inspired by and engaged with queer, psychoanalytic, anti-colonial, and Marxian thought, Tamar takes up research and theory as forms of reimagining…
Diversity is being alone
agitatejournalMonika Herceg
agitatejournalMonika Herceg (born 1990, in Sisak) is a poet, playwright, editor, feminist and popular science activist from Croatia. She is a prominent young poet of a new generation in Croatia and the most awarded young author in recent Croatian history. She grew up near Petrinja, is studying physics at the University of Rijeka and raises…
Mrtve ne treba micati / The dead should not be moved
agitatejournalBy Monika Herceg Šifra: KEPLER MRTVE NE TREBA MICATI (“Žene spadaju među najteže kolateralne žrtve pandemije koronavirusom”) Likovi: P (majka troje djece, žrtva obiteljskog nasilja) K (prijateljica koja dolazi biti potpora P.) /U dnevnom boravku za stolom sjede dvije žene. Rano je jutro. Malo dalje od njih leži tijelo muškarca u krvi. /…
Ana Vilenica
agitatejournalAna Vilenica is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for the European Research Council project ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ at the Polytechnic and University of Turin’s Inter-university Department of Regional & Urban Studies and Planning (DIST) and a member of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab. She is the Radical Housing Journal Editor and the Editor for Central and East…
On Access to Housing, Anti-Capitalist Struggles, Decolonization and Mothering in the Balkans
agitatejournalA conversation with Ana Vilenica This conversation with Ana Vilenica is a part of the new series of contributions titled Voices from the Balkans: Unsettling the politics of divide. The series is organized and curated by Emina Bužinkić, AGITATE! Editorial Collective Member. Emina: Ana, I stand in awe of your work, of how thoughtfully woven…
Marijana Hameršak
agitatejournalMarijana Hameršak is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb and a titular Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb. Her areas of research are migration, children’s literature and book history. She is the author of the book Pričalice: o povijesti djetinjstva i bajke (Taletellers: the History of Childhood and…
selma banich
agitatejournalselma banich (1979, Yugoslavia) is an artist and activist. Her socially engaged art practice is grounded in explorative, processual, and activist work, and is politically inspired by anarchism and feminism. selma has worked independently and in collaboration with other artists, curators, groups, and initiatives in the Balkans, Europe, and the US. She has participated in…
Sean Golden
agitatejournalSean Cameron Golden is a doctoral student in Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. There he explores how storytelling (in all its forms) can help to restore narratives to breathe life into the Black Queer Diaspora–for all the queer kids out there still searching. As a part of his work in the Department of…
Pedram Baldari
agitatejournalKurdish-Iranian born, sculptor, architect and interdisciplinary artist, working in installation, site specific, performance art, social practice, and sculpture. Pedram is based in between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Denton/Dallas, Texas. He has been featured in numerous national and international solo and group art exhibitions since 2010 such as the Victoria and Albert museum, London 2012, Documenta 13th…
Nick Kleese
agitatejournalNick Kleese is an Iowa farm kid turned literacy educator. Nick is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Editor at Climate Lit, Co-Founder of KidLitLab!, and an inaugural member of the Whippoorwill YA Award: an award recognizing rural representation in young adult literature. He has taught…
Deondre Smiles
agitatejournalDeondre Smiles (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe) is an Indigenous geographer whose ongoing research agenda is centered in the argument that tribal protection of remains, burial grounds, and more-than-human environments represents an effective form of ‘quotidian’ resistance against the settler-colonial state. This is in continuation of his dissertation work, which centered around Indigenous/settler contestations over…
Suzanne Chew
agitatejournalSuzanne Chew is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary, researching environmental decision-making and inclusive participation, and learning from Inuit communities in western Nunavut. Chew is an international student from Singapore, with a diasporic life–she grew up in the United Kingdom and has lived and worked in three continents.…
Efadul Huq
agitatejournalEfadul Huq is a poet, urban planner, community-based archivist, and mutual aid organizer currently based in Northampton, MA. He works as faculty in the Environmental Science & Policy program at Smith College. Inspired by multiple energies in and beyond the academy, Huq’s works span environmental justice issues, international community development, urban sustainability, and political ecology,…
Jordan Starck
agitatejournalRicha Singh
agitatejournalRicha Singh is a saathi of Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, a movement of farmers and laborers in Sitapur District of Uttar Pradesh, India. Immersed in organizational and movement building work for over two and half decades, she has co-authored a number of books, articles, and essays, including Sangtin Yatra: Saat Zindgiyon Mein Lipta Nari Vimarsh,…
Katayoun Amjadi
agitatejournalKatayoun is an Iranian-born, Minneapolis-based artist, educator, and independent curator. In her work, she often considers the sociopolitical systems that shape our perceptions of Self and Other, such as language, religion, gender, politics, and nationalist ideologies. Amjadi blurs these boundaries and creates an off-balance, hybrid style that is slightly acerbic and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Her…
ITSRC Webinar Panelists and Facilitators
agitatejournalAnti-Black Racism in SWANA and Diaspora (English) Panelists Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the critically acclaimed How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin), which won an American Book Award and the Arab American Book Award for Non-Fiction, and of This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the…
Doing History Through Art: The Story of the Green Glasses
agitatejournalBy Kamala Vasuki and Ponni Arasu *This is the second offering by Ponni Arasu and Kamala Vasuki in the Doing History Through Art cluster of the multi-part series Holding Movements, Agitating Epistemes: Remembering, Retelling, and Dreaming for Justice convened and co-edited by Richa Nagar and Ponni Arasu.* Vasuki and I are living through the worst…
Elora Halim Chowdhury
agitatejournalShimu–Made in Bangladesh: A story of women’s struggles
agitatejournalBy Elora Halim Chowdhury Rubaiyat Hossain’s Shimu—Made in Bangladesh,[1]Shimu—Made in Bangladesh was jointly produced by France, Denmark, Portugal, and Bangladesh. The main financing came from international grants from CNC, Eurimages, Sørfond+, and the Danish Film … Continue reading which had made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019, finally had its premiere in…
Roksana Bahramitash
agitatejournalRoksana Bahramitash earned her Ph.D. at McGill sociology department and pursued a career in academia teaching at McGill and Concordia universities and publishing many academic books and articles on gender and development. Alongside academia and policy advising Bahramitash has produced a documentary on Afghanistan. Her work is now focused on storytelling and creative nonfiction. She…
Life, War, and Everything Else
agitatejournalBy Roksana Bahramitash Long ago, I took refuge from a war and settled in the unceded land of Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. I now live in Tiohtià:ke, known as Montreal, and at times feel like I am an accomplice by default, with the white European settlers. ********* I left Iran, a country, where the sunflowers of my…
Demolition Politics in India: An Anti-Muslim, Anti-Dissent Strategy
agitatejournalBy 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…
AGITATE! as Creative Commons: AGITATE! Editorial Collective Speaks to Nancy Sims
agitatejournalThis 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!…
Statement in Support of Bilkis Bano’s Continuing Struggle For Justice!
agitatejournalThis statement was released on 18 September 2022 by a number of civil rights and social justice organizations (listed below) as well as activists and citizens. AGITATE! stands in solidarity with Bilkis Bano and the organizations, groups, and individuals who are agitating with her. 20 YEARS AFTER HORRIFIC GANG-RAPE AND MASS MURDERS IN GUJARAT, ABOUT…
On the Protests in Iran
agitatejournalBy 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…
Woman Life Freedom: A Conversation on the Protests in Iran
agitatejournalPlease join the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota for a conversation with Professors Minoo Moallem, Fatemeh Sadeghi, and Yalda Hamidi about the protests in Iran. The panelists will address circumstances that have led to the protests, politics of representation, and feminist organizing in Iran. This event is co-sponsored…