The ISARN Recordings

Hope as a Discipline: Reflecting on the Lebanese Revolution

In this episode (recorded 2022), Sophie Chamas and Ghiwa Sayegh reflect on the experience of listening back to our conversation about the Lebanese revolution of 2019-20 at a much less hopeful moment. They consider the importance of looking back, both historically and globally, and argue for the value of affect in revolutionary thought and practice. Title inspired by Mariame Kaba.

Pictures of a Revolution: Lebanon 2019-2020

In this episode (recorded Nov 2019 and Feb 2020), the writer-activists Sophie Chamas, Nizar Hassan, Joseph Salloum, and Ghiwa Sayegh discuss the popular revolution that was taking place across Lebanon at the time and share their hopes and fears about what might happen next. Title inspired by Susan Meiselas. Music credits https://isarn.org/. 

Solidarity, Scholarship, and Struggle (Recorded March 2020)

This is our second installment with Robyn Spencer, author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (2016) and Angela Davis: Radical Icon (2023). In this episode, Spencer considers the question of solidarity from several angles, discussing her collaborative scholarship and activism, the Black Panthers’ ways of working together and with other movements, and the scholar-activist Angela Davis. Music credits https://isarn.org/.

Black Activism and Internationalism in the United States (Recorded March 2020)

This is the first installment of a two-part conversation with Robyn Spencer, author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (2016) and Angela Davis: Radical Icon (2023). This episode focuses on Spencer’s work on the history of Black organizing in the United States, looking particularly at the Black Panther Party and the anti-imperialist writer and activist Patricia Murphy Robinson. Music credits https://isarn.org/.

The Tricontinental Movement and the Cultures of Solidarity (Recorded October 2019)

What role does culture play in creating, transforming, and sustaining political solidarity? In this episode (recorded 2019), we speak to Anne Garland Mahler, author of From Tricontinentalism to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and International Solidarity (2018), and Debra Lennard, curator of the exhibition ‘Notes on Solidarity: Tricontinentalism in Print’ (2019), about their work on the cultural history of the Tricontinental movement.