dastak

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Abdul Aijaz ghup andhere meṇ sāṇs letī nā-dīda khaṭ khaṭ tārīk duniyā meṇ sarsarātī havā kī dastak yeh kyā jahaṇ hai jahaṇ andhere na jāne kab se  chahār jānib tane hue haiṇ na jāne kab se ham apnī ānkhoṇ kī raushnā’ī meṇ khvāb sīṇche savāl oṛhe sarāpā chup se thame hu’e haiṇ hamārī nazareṇ  hamārī…

दस्तक

agitatejournal

अब्दुल ऐजाज़ घुप अँधेरे में सांस लेती ना-दीदा खट खट तारीक दुनिया में सरसराती हवा की दस्तक यह क्या जहाँ है जहाँ अँधेरे न जाने कब से चहार जानिब तने हुए हैं न जाने कब से  हम अपनी आँखों की रौशनाई में ख़्वाब सींचे सवाल ओढ़े सरापा चुप से थमे हुए हैं हमारी नज़रें हमारी…

Braiding Climate Stories:

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Grappling with Land, Environment, and Climate (In)justices through Feminist Anti-colonial Pedagogy   Meera Karunananthan and Richa Nagar This article is a part of AGITATE! Vol 6 (2026): Pedagogy of Hope   Introduction Climate change is a defining force for many university and college students in Canada and the United States. It shapes their political consciousness,…

Suffocation: A Journey Through Academia

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Laura Kim This article is a part of AGITATE! Vol 6 (2026): Pedagogy of Hope     In Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, students in Richa Nagar’s courses embraced journeys of unlearning and relearning that focused not only on grappling with concepts, frameworks, processes, and events but also with the foundational modes through which we learn and evolve…

Love Letters & River Currents:

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Collective Becomings in the Classroom   A RIOT FOR JUSTICE by Sibling Cotravelers & CONFLUENCE by Amaia Mayberry, Iris Anderson, and Morgan Hamilton   This article is a part of AGITATE! Vol 6 (2026): Pedagogy of Hope   Can we stitch hope in the midst of hopelessness? The two co-authored zines that we present here…

Encircling Pedagogies of Peace: Faculty for a Free Palestine

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Ki’en Debicki   In Tkaronto, on the evening of Saturday, April 27, 2024, I attended the screening of the documentary film Yintah as part of the Hot Docs film “festival.” Before the film began, several Wet’suwet’en land defenders took to the stage to denounce the main funders of the festival: “While we are grateful for…

Practicing Radical Empathy & Vulnerability

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Baby Steps: Memories of Being a Teaching Artist A play by Melissa Murray-Mutch   Setting: Some high school in the Bronx, New York.  Characters: Melissa (Teaching Artist) Students Teacher Intercom Voice Security Guard Director of Education Ahmed Chanel Vanilla Ice Jr. Al Rodriguez ACT 1 Scene 1. Week One: The Classroom. At rise: Melissa Murray,…

Editorial Introduction – Vol. 1

Beaudelaine Pierre, Hale Konitshek, Julie Santella, Keavy McFadden, Khoi Nguyen, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer
This is a minimalist black and white ink drawing on a plain white background, depicting a series of interconnected, organic forms that strongly resemble roots or tubers. The composition is horizontal, with the forms spread across the

We come together to write this inaugural editorial of AGITATE! after journeying as a collective for almost two years. Along this path, members of our group — including our contributing writers, artists, and activists — have joined in and advanced this vision and work at different times. Sometimes this coming together was planned and at other times it was sheer coincidence.

There’s Something in the Water

Tia-Simone Gardner
This image is an aerial view, likely from a satellite or drone, showing a section of the Mississippi River and an adjacent industrial area. In the top left corner, there's a dark blue

In her book A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None, Kathryn Yussof (2018) describes a thick relationship between extractive capitalism, geologic time, and (anti)Blackness. She writes, “As the Anthropocene proclaims the language of species life – Anthropos – through a universalist geologic commons, it neatly erases histories of racism that were incubated through the regulatory structure of geologic relations.

Volume 2: Unsettling Pedagogies

Hale Konitshek, Julie Santella, Keavy McFadden, Richa Nagar, Sara Musaifer
This image presents a striking and somewhat paradoxical sculpture or art installation, suspended against a dark, featureless background. At the center of the frame, a pale, translucent hot water bottle is encased almost entirely

AGITATE! Unsettling Knowledges presents our second volume, “Unsettling Pedagogies.” Forever cognizant of our limitations as a journal that relies on a ‘domain’ based in a R-1 University in the United States, we highlight unsettling lessons in creative co-learning. We rearticulate AGITATE!’s commitment to building learning spaces where radical pedagogies for sociopolitical and epistemic justice are at the front and center of our praxis.

Introducing AGITATE! Volume 5

Abdul Aijaz and Richa Nagar
This is a striking black and white photograph, characterized by strong contrasts and deep shadows that create a sense of quiet intimacy and contemplation. The filename "CHUP" (meaning "silent" or "quiet

The editorial introduction to AGITATE! Journal’s fifth volume—Stories and Ecologies of Violence: Walking Together in Solidarity and Silence/ Chup by Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz.

Domestic Affairs

Katayoun Amjadi
This image displays an art installation featuring five small, house-shaped sculptures arranged horizontally across a plain, light gray wall. The lighting from above casts distinct shadows beneath and behind each object, giving them a three

Domestic Affairs investigates the idea of home in body, structure, and land, and explores the culturally embedded promise of security and hope engendered in the archetypal house. It explores a conceptual topography of “place”; it is a kind of domestic archaeology.

Dreams as R-evolution

Coral Bijoux
This image depicts a striking art installation set within what appears to be a lush, semi-enclosed garden or greenhouse space. The overall impression is one of nature reclaiming or merging with human-made forms

Dreams as R-evolution—a visual art and single-use plastic installation of sculpture, drawings, and found objects—is an installation originally created in the University of KwaZulu Natal’s Westville campus plant nursery that now speaks to dreaming as a r-evolutionary act in an old colonial gallery, the IZIKO National Gallery in Cape Town.

Khalamuni

Efadul Huq
This image is a horizontal banner, predominantly white or off-white, with text at the top and an illustration of figures filling the bottom section. At the top, centered, is the word "AG

This poem is an act of mourning, remembering, and grieving a loved one taken by the pandemic.

Parking Ramp Project

Aniccha Arts
This image captures a low-angle, slightly blurry shot dominated by warm, golden-yellow tones, likely taken inside a parking ramp. In the immediate foreground, a person's lower body is visible

Aniccha Arts premieres a performance installation inside a seven-level parking garage. The project asks questions about transience, migration, and stability in a space that temporarily stores cars and is home to nothing. Performers pervade the parking structure with their bodies, working against the visible slant of the ramp to find their individual verticality. Questions we asked in creating the work: How do we find softness in a landscape of concrete? What anchors us on these alternating planes? How do we connect across such a complex landscape?

Teleportation | عَبْرَة

Ola Saad Znad
This image presents a wide, elevated view of a sprawling city bisected by a large river, under a bright, somewhat hazy sky. The overall impression is one of a historic city with layers of

“Yes, Baghdad and I haven’t seen each other since the war, but am I brave enough to change its perfect image in my memory? The walls of Baghdad extend their reach to me, protecting the only solid memory I have of the place I love, where my roots run deep. These walls keep me wondering: what would my life be if I had never left my home?”

Apertures

Ritika Ganguly and Alia Jeraj
This image is a screenshot displaying two stylized, dark purple-grey shapes against a soft, light pinkish-white background. The overall impression is that of a projection or a screen.

Apertures: A creative portrayal of domestic violence for SEWA-AIFW is a bricolage of stories and art forms. It draws on a variety of artistic disciplines to represent a spectrum of lived experiences of domestic violence in our societies, and the specter of patriarchy that shapes them. It tells four survivor stories from Minnesota through the lens of survivor stories in New Delhi and Chennai.

इंसानियत का लॉकडाउन

Richa Nagar and Richa Singh
This image, titled 'Singh-Nagar-3.jpg', captures an overwhelming scene of a massive crowd of people and numerous buses on a wide road, likely a highway or major thoroughfare,

The title of this piece translates to—Humanity in Lockdown. It documents the plight of migrant workers who fled Indian cities en masse, the deepening religious divide, and intensifying poverty in the context of COVID-19 pandemic and the nation-wide lockdown that was instituted in April 2020.

Step, step, breathe

Sophie Oldfield
This image is a minimalist, high-contrast drawing on a black background, featuring two stylized figures rendered in thick white lines. Each figure consists of a solid white, roughly circular shape at the top

I started running eight years ago as a way to be in my city, in Cape Town. Step, step, breathe (video above) shares how running gave me a way to move through Cape Town, to see it anew, and to participate in it.

Baggage

Setareh Ghoreishi
This image is a four-panel grid, like a split screen from a video, with a warm, somewhat desaturated, vintage aesthetic dominated by shades of golden yellow, orange, and brown, contrasted with

In “Baggage,” I struggle with my baggage, all that I carry with me from home. Every day I carry my memories of Iran with me–with all the emotions and thoughts that brings. This performance shows the complexity inherent in both leaving and staying.

The Passage

Marijana Hameršak and Selma Banich
This image is a large square collage, composed of a 7x7 grid of smaller squares, creating a patchwork effect. The central 5x5 grid (25 squares) features individual portraits

This work of Selma Banich & Marijana Hameršak that emerged in collaboration with the Women to Women Collective is a collection of portraits of migrants who lost their lives on the perilous journeys in the Balkans.

Buried Waters

Efadul Huq
This image is a visually striking, text-heavy piece with a somber and reflective tone, set against a textured background that evokes dried earth or handmade paper. **Overall Appearance:** The image

Efadul Huq’s visual poem revisits journeys along Dhaka’s besieged rivers, where the silent struggle against land developers echoes through cracked lines traced from memories captured on the banks of Turag.

SKMS Code of Conduct

Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS)
This is a wide, horizontal banner image with a light, off-white background. It features bold text in the upper half and a dense, abstract crowd of figures along the bottom edge.

A code of conduct for Code of Conduct for Researchers, Writers, Filmmakers and Others Interested in Working with the Sangathan. By the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS)

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

Zaynab Asmal, interviewed by Koni Benson
This image is a multi-panel, black and white collage or comic strip, combining hand-drawn elements with photographs, likely depicting or commenting on a specific event. **Overall Layout:**

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.