by Miriam Potocky Rafaidus | Today, as I watch troubling developments unfold in the United States, I can’t help but feel history knocking—not softly, but insistently. The parallels between the collapse of Czechoslovak democracy in 1948 and the democratic backsliding occurring in the U.S. under the Trump administration in 2025 are unnerving.
Violence against American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women is ongoing in the U.S. – and it’s personal for Lara Neel and Lisa Neel. On February 13, 1872, their grandfather’s great-grandmother was murdered. Today, they use their historic dressmaking work to tell a woman-focused, Cherokee-centered story that has relevance today.
In 2025, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported from the U.S. to El Salvador, where torture is systematically practiced to this day. Lifelong activist David Hinkley shows how urgent it is that outrage inspires a new generation to join and lead the fight.
FREE SEMINAR JUN 18, 2025: In this conversation between Dr. Gabriel A. Cruz and Dr. Chris McAuley, they explore how contemporary speculative fiction constructs Latinidad in ways that advance humanizing depictions of Latinx people, as well as those cases where narratives reinforce reductive understandings about Latinidad.
Lived Places Publishing (LPP) proudly announces its official launch on the Fulcrum.org platform. This milestone marks a significant advancement in the accessibility and discoverability of scholarly content focused on social identity and the lived experience of place.
Survival in a world built on punishment is not just an act of defiance but a testament to the resilience of those who have been criminalized—Black, Brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and poor communities. Their struggle is not just against incarceration, but against a society determined to strip them of dignity and opportunity long after they’ve been released.
LPP author Emma Farrell has arranged a seminar on the subject of supporting higher education students with mental health difficulties which is bringing together leading scholars, student support experts, policy makers, and government officials from Ireland and abroad.
Pregnant and parenting teen moms, along with their children, face difficult and uncertain futures without appropriate support in terms of economic investment in healthcare or educational support. Janice Airhart offers a perspective on how to deliver these supports, in light of her personal and professional lived experience as a former high school teacher of teen moms.
FREE SEMINAR MAY 15, 2025: In this conversation between Dr. Kaelie Giffel and Dr. Reham El-Morally, they discuss how the university fails to serve the majority of people that move through it and what can be done about these failures. Themes discussed will include oppression and knowledge production in the university, divisions of labor between faculty, staff, and students, what aspects of the university are worth keeping, and tactics for transforming the university, from within and without.
FREE SEMINAR APR 24, 2025: In this conversation between Stephanie Levin and Dr. Janise Hurtig, they discuss ableism as a systemic issue that continues to plague American postsecondary education – and how educators can help break the cycle of ableism and further promote inclusiveness within their institutions.
Lived Places Publishing