In this week’s episode of Imagine otherwise, I interview professor Tania Lizarazo about how digital storytelling lets her build transnational community and accountability in deeply local spaces, the very different process of doing collaborative research that actively enriches the lives of everyone involved (not just the lives of scholars in the academy), and why being willing to listen and learn together in public is how Tania imagines otherwise.
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You can also read the transcript and show notes on the Ideas on Fire website, which have links to Tania’s work and all the concepts, people, and events we discuss on the show (great for teaching!).
Guest: Tania Lizarazo
Tania Lizarazo is an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication and the Global Studies Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her interdisciplinary research and teaching challenge writing as the center of knowledge production and explores collaborative methodologies.
Her digital storytelling projects include Mujeres Pacíficas, a collaboration with Afro-Colombian women activists; Sexualidades Campesinas, a collaboration with LGBTQ members of farm working communities in California’s Central Valley (with Elisa Oceguera, David Tenorio, Diana Pardo Pedraza and Robert McKee Irwin); and three collaborations with immigrants in Baltimore: Moving Stories: Latinas in Baltimore; Intercultural Tales: Learning with Baltimore’s Immigrant Communities (with Thania Muñoz Davaslioglu); and Honest Conversations: Faith Community Dialogues on Immigration and Race (with Felipe Filomeno).
Her book manuscript Postconflict Utopias: Performing Everyday Survival in Colombia draws upon the digital stories from Mujeres Pacíficas and storytellers’ local, regional, and transnational networks to define survival as a series of everyday practices—from showing up to care-taking. As rehearsals of peace-building, these stories and practices exemplify the embodied knowledge that makes survival and imagining peace possible.
Key quote
“I want a world where people are encouraged to tell their stories and where others are willing to listen. I think that it’s important that we’re willing to learn together in public and we can imagine together other ways to do the same kind of things that we have been trained to do.”
– Tania Lizarazo on episode 91 of the Imagine Otherwise podcast
