RMF: [Pre]Conceptions of a Movement & Interview with Zaynab Asmal

Zaynab Asmal, interviewed by Koni Benson

RMF:[Pre]Conceptions of a Movement, is a comic book written and drawn by Zaynab Asmal. It was the product of a final assignment for a third year history course “African History Through Comic Books: History for What and For Whom?” designed and taught by Koni Benson, a postdoctoral fellow at the time, at the University of Cape Town in 2016. 

Playing With Silence: Fawad Khan Speaks with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz

Fawad Khan with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz

Fawad Khan speaks to Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz about the journey of writing ‘Chup,’ bringing it to the stage given its critique of the oppressive state apparatuses, his vision and hope for art, and what the border-crossing by ‘Chup’ has meant for him.

The Labor of Political Theatre as Embodied Politics: A Conversation

Richa Nagar, Anna Selmeczi
Agitate Logo

What follows is a letter exchange between Anna and Richa. Richa’s book, Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability, underwent significant revisions during the course of this letter exchange. In addition to mediating on the labor of political theater and embodied politics, this exchange underscores the making of conversations and relationships as continuously unfolding journeys that cannot be contained by fixed words on the page.

The Perils and Possibilities of Creative Economy: A Conversation

Dia Da Costa, Richa Nagar, and Sarah Saddler
Agitate Logo

This conversation, built around themes and questions discussed in Dia Da Costa’s book Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theatre (University of Illinois Press, 2016), analyzes the terrain of the “creative economy” and explores its ethical implications for national belonging, epistemic justice, and academic knowledge production through the politics of academic journeying.  Exploring the possibilities, limits, and risks of the creative economy across multiple personal trajectories and political realms, we offer perspectives on the creative economy as a landscape where colonial histories of violence, academic privilege and positionality, and possibilities for progressive politics become especially visible and critical.

Sites of Contestation, Letters Between Friends

Keavy McFadden and Julie Santella
Agitate Logo

What follows is a series of letters between the two of us – Julie and Keavy, two friends and agitators – that meditate on how we, as graduate students, step into the academic world inevitably carrying prior knowledges with us and must continually agonize about how to do justice to and with them in academic life. As we write to each other, we also write to you, in the hope that these reflections might help to remind you of the prior knowledges you also carry.

Conversations Across Indigeneity

Dayamani Barla, Cante Suta-Francis Bettelyoun, Siddharth Bharath, and Tarun Kumar

AGITATE! is excited to share with you this conversation between Dayamani Barla, of the Munda adivasi community in India, a journalist and tribal rights activist; and Cante Suta-Francis Bettelyoun, of the Oglala Lakota in North America, coordinator of the University of Minnesota Native American Medicine Gardens.

Imagining Transnational Solidarities: Speaking Across Divides

Imagining Transnational Solidarities Research Circle

Imagining Transnational Solidarities: Speaking Across Divides is a series of webinars that centered transnational feminist, Black, indigenous, migrant voices speaking to the contestations and possibilities emerging for social movements, art-making and political shifts in the midst of multiple crises.

Between Academic Time And Crisis Time: A Conversation With Mona Bhan And Celina Su

Celina Su and Mona Bhan
Agitate Logo

So much has happened since we met for the first time via Zoom in early May 2020. On a hot summer afternoon in August 2020, we met via Zoom again, spending two hours thinking through the interview questions presented by the AGITATE! Team. We took turns answering each question; each time, we excitedly pointed out joint commitments and overlaps in our responses.