The Fire These Times

This is a crossover episode with New Lines Podcast on the topic of 'postwar' Lebanon. A big thank you to New Lines’ Faisal Al Yafai and Lydia Wilson for hosting this conversation.   Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: http://TheFireThisTi.Me Substack: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes

This is a conversation with Nat Muller, an independent curator, writer and academic living between the UK and Amsterdam.  Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: http://TheFireThisTi.Me Substack: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes She is an expert in contemporary art from the Middle East and curated the Danish pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, showing Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour. She has curated shows at major venues, including Eye Film Museum Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, The Mosaic Rooms in London and ifa Gallery in Berlin. She is an AHRC Midlands3Cities-funded PhD student at Birmingham City University working on science fiction in contemporary art from the Middle East. We primarily talked about her paper "Lunar Dreams: Space Travel, Nostalgia, and Retrofuturism in A Space Exodus and The Lebanese Rocket Society". Topics Discussed: Space travel and science fiction Space travel and the Arab world A Palestinian space exodus and the Lebanese Rocket Society The prolonged present and stolen futures The role of nostalgia The mnemonic imagination Who is space for? It is easier to reach the moon than Jerusalem The limitations of the nation state in Arabic science fiction Afro-futurism Resources Mentioned: The Future Palestinian Present: https://www.mangalmedia.net/english//the-future-palestinian-present Film: Erased, Ascent of the Invisible by Ghassan Halwani: https://joeyayoub.com/2019/12/01/ghassan-halwani-and-the-reclaiming-of-lebanons-imaginaries/ Film: Those Who Remain by Eliane Raheb Film: Ila Ayn? by Georges Nasser Film: Safar Barlik by Henry Barakat The Legacy of the Great Lebanon Famine (with Lina Mounzer and Timour Azhari): https://thefirethisti.me/2021/07/16/85-the-legacy-of-the-great-lebanon-famine-with-lina-mounzer-and-timour-azhari/ The Nation on No Map: Black Anarchism and Abolition by William C. Anderson (upcoming guest): https://www.akpress.org/nationonnomap.html Article on The Lebanese Rocket Societythat I wrote in 2013 https://hummusforthought.com/2013/03/12/lebanese-rocket-society-a-review/ Recommended Books: The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture by Mark Bould The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis by Amitav Ghosh Refugee Heritage by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti

This is a conversation with Asser Khattab, a Syrian writer who has reported on Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq for various international news outlets. We spoke about his essay for New Lines Magazine, "why I stopped writing about Syria." Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: http://TheFireThisTi.Me Substack: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: How Asser started writing about Syria Pigeonholing as Arab journalists Why Asser stopped writing about Syria Us leaving Lebanon at the same time Picturing safe spaces What is 'normal'? The role of Twitter in journalism The dangers of living in Lebanon as an undocumented Syrian Survivor's guilt and imposter's syndrome Resources Mentioned: A look at the Lebanon uprising through its chants  Syrian melancholy in Lebanon's revolution Newlines Podcast That Cairo Concert, Mental Health and Growing Up Queer in Lebanon (With Hamed Sinno) ‘Revolution everywhere’: A conversation between Hong Kong and Lebanese protesters Hong Kong’s Existential Crisis (with JP) Syrian Prison Literature and the Poetics of Human Rights (with Shareah Taleghani) Syria, Journalism and the Cost of Indifference In the End, It Was All About Love (with Musa Okwonga) Recommended Books: Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero by James Romm Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou

This is a conversation with Dana Moss, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and the author of the book "The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes." Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: TheFireThisTi.Me Substack newsletter: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com/ Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: How Yemeni, Libyan and Syrian diasporas in the US and UK reacted to the Arab Spring Risks of protesting in the diaspora Government responses to diaspora pressures and activism Personal insights from my own experience Why diasporas are still undervalued Impostor's syndrome and survivor's guilt Diasporas are not homogeneous The Interpol problem Legacy of the Arab Spring Recommended Books: Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War by Leila Al-Shami and Robin Yassin-Kassab We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar The War on the Uyghurs: China's Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority by Sean R. Roberts Dictators Without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia by Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw

This is a conversation with Shui-yin Sharon Yam (her 2nd time on the podcast) largely around a paper that she wrote called "Complicating Acts of Advocacy: Tactics in the Birthing Room". She is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, and a faculty affiliate of Gender and Women's Studies and the Center for Equality and Social Justice at the University of Kentucky. She is one of the series editors for the Ohio State University Press's New Directions in Rhetoric and Materiality. Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: TheFireThisTi.Me Substack newsletter: https://thefirethesetimes.substack.com/ Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: Rhetorical Analysis, Reproductive Justice and Doulas: Intro to each and the links between them Three pillars of Reproductive Freedom and global implications Rhetoric of Health and Medicine: intro and explanation Technocratic model of birth: intro and explanation What makes some stories 'untellable'? The pitfalls of the 'self-made moms' rhetoric Rhetoric and the antivaxx movement Resources Mentioned: Romper's Doula Diaries on YouTube "Rhetorical Appeals and Tactics in New York Times Comments About Vaccines: Qualitative Analysis"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33275110/ "Using Rhetorical Situations to Examine and Improve Vaccination Communication" https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.697383/full#h4 Vaccine Rhetorics https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814214336.html Recommended Books: Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Dána-Ain Davis We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender by Stef M. Shuster

This is a conversation with speculative fiction writer and  sustainability researcher Andrew Dana Hudson. His stories have appeared  in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Vice Terraform, MIT  Technology Review, Grist, Little Blue Marble, The New Accelerator,  StarShipSofa and more, as well as various books and anthologies. His  fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and longlisted for the  BSFA. In 2016 his story “Sunshine State” won the first Everything  Change Climate Fiction Contest, and in 2017 he was runner up in the  Kaleidoscope Writing The Future Contest. His 2015 essay “On the  Political Dimensions of Solarpunk” has helped define and grow the  “solarpunk” subgenre. He is a member of the cursed 2020 class of the  Clarion Workshop. Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: TheFireThisTi.Me Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: What is Solarpunk? Introduction to his essay “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk“ The urgency of Solarpunk and the response to Cyberpunk Post-normal fiction Solarpunk and global network society: why did it start in the 2010s? The importance of care work Solarpunk and the future of cities Solarpunk and utopias Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction The climate activism momentum How has Solarpunk changed over the years? Also: discussion of COP26 and Green New Deal Books mentioned + Recommended: Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures edited by Priya  Sarukkai Chabria and Taiyo Fujii and Shweta Taneja (which includes a  story by Andrew) Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures by Andrew (Pre-order now) Lo stato solare by Andrew Infomocracy by Malka Ann Older Gnomon by Nick Harkaway Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Walkaway by Cory Doctorow The art is by artist and illustrator CosmosKitty (I added the text). Check out their work here: cosmoskitty.com

Hey everyone, As I'm taking a bit of a break I'm sharing with you the episode I did on the podcast "It Could Happen Here Daily with Robert Evans" about my article for Lausan.hk entitled "The periphery has no time for binaries".  Make sure to check out It Could Happen Here :) See you all in January!  To support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Blog: thefirethisti.me

As I'm taking a wee break, here's an interview I gave on the Mangal Media podcast about my article of the same name.  You can read it here: https://www.mangalmedia.net/english/solarpunk-climate-change-and-the-new-thinkable Mangal Media is a global collective of writers, artists, journalists and scholars from the so-called “periphery” who are concerned about reclaiming their own narratives. Check out their podcast :) I was on there more recently as well to talk about protest chants since the Arab Spring.  See you in January. Patreon: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Blog: thefirethisti.me 

As I'm taking a bit of a break, I thought I'd share with you a recording published by the Sara Jeva Collective. Listen to those who became victims of illegal pushbacks in Croatia. The reports deal with flight, racism and policeviolence against migrants and refugees. Links: https://twitter.com/JevaSara/status/1446739260112097282 https://reportssarajevo.blackblogs.org/ Related episodes on The Fire These Times: Episode 35: The European Union’s Violence Against Asylum Seekers, with Jack Sapoch, coordinator of No Name Kitchen‘s border violence reporting, itself part of the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN). Episode 49: Moria Camp and the Deadly Cost of Fortress Europe, with Ghias Al Jundi, a Syrian-British human rights activist, about the 2020 fires at the Moria camp in Greece Just look them up wherever you listen to this podcast!

This is a conversation with Shareah Taleghani, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and Arabic at Queens College at the City University of New York and the author of the book "Readings in Syrian Prison Literature: The Poetics of Human Rights" published by Syracuse University Press. Support: Patreon.com/firethesetimes Website: TheFireThisTi.Me Twitter + Instagram @ firethesetimes Topics Discussed: Background and context, Syrian prison literature Poetics of human rights, and how Syrian prison literature affected her view of human rights On Tadmor military prison On censorship, arbitrariness and tanfis in Syria Arab critics, literature and human rights Effects of truth Universality of prison literature Syrian prison literature and the 2011 revolution Selective solidarity and global prison abolitionism (US, Iran, Syria) Also Mentioned: Faraj Bayrakdar Human Rights, Inc by Joseph Slaughter Supreme Court Justices Make a Surprising Proposal in Torture Case Hasiba Abdelrahman Mustapha Khalifa Rosa Yassin Hassan Malek Daghestani Ali Abu Dahan Heba Al-Dabbagh Tadmor film by Monica Borgmann & Lokman Slim Memory, violence and fear: Why Lokman Slim’s murder must not be depoliticized - my L'Orient Le Jour piece Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria by Lisa Wedeen Miriam Cooke The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender, and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama & Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama by Rebecca Joubin Nazih Abu Nidal Ghassan al-Jaba'i Maher Arrar 'Anticipating' the 2011 Arab Uprisings: Revolutionary Literatures and Political Geographies by Rita Sakr Recommended Books: The Shell by Mustafa Khalifa A Dove in Free Flight by Faraj Bayrakdar Forced Passages by Dylan Rodríguez