https://branditsummers.com Brandi T. Summers Mon, 18 Jul 2022 23:31:16 +0000 https://branditsummers.com en https://branditsummers.com/Home Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:51 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Home brandi t. summers, ph.d. &nbsp; professor ∙ researcher ∙ writer &nbsp; race, urban infrastructure, aesthetics &nbsp; https://branditsummers.com/Book Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:51 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Book ⎯⎯Book⎯⎯ <img width="1125" height="1650" width_o="1125" height_o="1650" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4db8602e3b0f54d3eb28adc34e2c2ee213532ccb573003b64e181bae39cd3169/IMG_6353.JPG" data-mid="56759151" border="0" data-scale="62" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4db8602e3b0f54d3eb28adc34e2c2ee213532ccb573003b64e181bae39cd3169/IMG_6353.JPG" /> Reviews of Black in Place S. Heard. 2021. “Reviewed Work: Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City by Brandi Thompson Summers.” Washington History J.S. Lewis, J. Robinson, A. Reese, M. Ramírez, B. Summers. 2021. “Book Review Symposium - ‘Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City.’” AntipodeO. Clerge. 2021. “Review of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City.” Social Forces&nbsp; B. Hinger &amp; E. Quinn. 2020. “Black aesthetic emplacement: Thinking beyond neoliberal capitalist explanations of gentrification.” City V. Brown. 2020. “Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of a Post-Chocolate City.” Carolina Planning Journal J. Perez Caro &amp; B. Cheng. 2020. “Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of a Post-Chocolate City.” Ethnic and Racial Studies&nbsp; T. Kumfer. 2021. “Making and Unmaking a Chocolate City: Three Recent Works on Washington, D.C.” Journal of Urban History L. Freeman. 2024. “Brandi Thompson Summers. Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City.“ American Historical Review Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City&nbsp;(University of North Carolina Press)While Washington, D.C. is still often referred to as “Chocolate City,” it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents this shift better than H Street. Black in Place documents D.C.’s shift to a “post-chocolate” cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street’s economic and racial developments. The book focuses on the continuing significance of blackness in a place like D.C., how blackness contributes to our understanding of contemporary urbanization, and how it laid an important foundation for how Black people have been thought to exist in cities. Black in Place also analyzes how blackness—as a representation of diversity—is marketed to sell a progressive, “cool,” and authentic experience of being in and moving through an urban center. Black in Place offers a theoretical framework for understanding how blackness is aestheticized and deployed to organize landscapes and raise capital. Using a mix of participant observation, visual and media analysis, interviews, and archival research, it shows how blackness has become a prized and lucrative aesthetic that often leaves out D.C.’s Black residents.☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆“Black in Place is a beautiful, critical, and searing narrative of displacement on H Street, the most heartbreaking and telling of all of the gentrification processes in the Chocolate City. Brandi Thompson Summers has written the book you need to read to understand how racism, capitalism, and power, material and symbolic, collide in the modern American&nbsp;city with constraining and calamitous outcomes for working class Black residents.”—Zandria F. Robinson, author of This Ain’t Chicago“Sitting at the intersection of human geography, cultural studies, and Black studies, Black in Place brings new cutting edge perspectives to each of these fields. A both timely and important book.”—Rashad Shabazz, author of Spatializing Blackness https://branditsummers.com/Research Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:51 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Research ⎯⎯Research⎯⎯ Current and ongoing research projects Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City (under contract with the University of California Press) In Oakland, California, Black resistance has laid the foundation for movements and formations that reclaim space through public cultures, electoral and grassroots politics, and in the aesthetics of everyday life. Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City, explores and highlights the roots and routes of this resistance and reclamation, not only as a response to urban gentrification and related economic policies, but also as a quest to think about the past, present, and future of a Black city. Ultimately, the book argues that Black Oaklanders use a myriad of symbolic and material means – activism, consumption, recovery, escape, and adaptation – to reimagine and reclaim the Black city. &nbsp; Oakland, like many other cities with large, but dwindling Black populations, has experienced a continuing legacy of destructive urban policies leveraged by federal, state, and local governments that forcefully evict economically disadvantaged communities, treating them as disposable, impoverished urban dwellers. The mobility of Black residents in Oakland, either by choice or force, resembles distinct patterns of re-segregation. Policy is what has driven the cyclical destruction of Black spaces, relying on the state to solve the problems they created. I’m ultimately asking, what does it mean for Black people to have the same experience over and over again? In other words, what does it mean for Black people to live through constant cycles of movement, containment, dispossession, and erasure? How can we imagine various forms of displacement and emplacement alongside the mechanisms (policies) that attempt to keep Black people in place? How can we recast what’s already been done in a new light? This project is asking us to view from a different perspective, a different lens, in order to consider what work is already being accomplished by the people who have been most affected. Oakland Echoes details the critical histories, conflicts, and struggles over how to use the city, who belongs to the city, and most importantly, who makes the city. This book does not offer a seamless or neat history of Black Oakland. It resists the idea of presenting a positive/negative story about Black life here. Instead, I highlight the complex politics, identities, struggles, joys that have made it such a difficult place to write about. How does one hold together all of the contradictions and complexities that make this medium-sized, extraordinarily ordinary city survive? Previous research https://branditsummers.com/Publications Tue, 14 Jan 2020 00:32:40 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Publications ⎯⎯Publications⎯⎯ Selected academic articles, essays, and book chapters Summers, Brandi T. and Moriah Ulinskas. 2025. “Archiving Oakland.” Places Journal, April. Summers, Brandi T. and Juleon Robinson. 2025. “Black Geographies.” Pp. 159-170. In J. Winders and I. Ashutosh, eds. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Cultural and Social Geography, Chichester, UK: John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd. Summers, Brandi T. 2024. “The Reparative Schematics of Housing in Zachary Levenson’s Delivery as Dispossession.” Critical Sociology 51(3): 601-604. Summers, Brandi and Desiree Fields. 2024. “Speculative Urban Worldmaking: Meeting Financial Violence with a Politics of Collective Care,” Antipode 56(3): 821-840. Summers, Brandi T. 2023. “Picturing the Textures of a Chocolate City.” Pp. 143-149. In G. Harris and A. Watson, eds. Evelyn Hofer: Eyes on the City, Delmonico Books/High Museum of Art. Summers, Brandi. 2022. “Urban Phantasmagorias.” City 26(2-3): 191-198. Summers, Brandi Thompson and Olalekan Jeyifous. 2022. “Apocryphal Gospel of Oakland: (Im)permanence, Improvisation, and Our Absurdist Future.” Perspecta 54: Yale Journal of Architecture. Summers, Brandi. 2022. “Black Insurgent Aesthetics and the Public Imaginary,” Urban Geography 43(6): 837-847. Summers, Brandi T. 2021. “Untimely Futures.” Places Journal, November 9. Summers, Brandi T. 2021. “Aesthetic Activism and the Quest for Authenticity in a Time of Crisis.” Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture 6(3), June 14. Summers, Brandi Thompson. 2021. “Race, Authenticity, and the Gentrified Aesthetics of Belonging.” Pp. 115-139. In C. Lindner and G. Sandoval, eds. Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City, Amsterdam University Press. Summers, Brandi Thompson. 2021. “Reclaiming the Chocolate City: Soundscapes of Gentrification and Resistance in Washington, DC,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(1): 30-46. Summers, Brandi Thompson and Kathryn Howell. 2019. “Fear and Loathing (of Others): Race, Class, and Contestation of Space in Washington, D.C.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43(6): 1085-1105. Summers, Brandi. 2017. “Race as Aesthetic: The Politics of Vision, Visibility, and Visuality in Vogue Italia’s ‘A Black Issue.’” QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 4(3): 81-108. Summers, Brandi. 2019. “‘Housing is a Natural Right, Not a Privilege’: Anti-Gentrification Activism in a Chocolate City.” The Funambulist 22, March 4:12-14. Summers, Brandi Thompson. 2019. “Post-Apocalyptic Shine in the Afro-Future.” ASAP/Journal 4(2): 317-320. Summers, Brandi Thompson. 2019. “‘Haute (Ghetto) Mess’: Post-Racial Aesthetics and the Seduction of Blackness in High Fashion.” Pp. 245-263. In H. Gray, S. Banet-Weiser, and R. Mukherjee, eds. Racism Post-Race: Culture, Critique, and the Color Line. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Summers, Brandi. 2019. “Crafting Selves: Elia Alba’s Supperclub and the Politics of Home(place).” Pp. 40-51. In S. Reisman, G. Bolster, and A. Nanda, eds. The Supper Club: by Elia Alba. Chicago: Hirmer Publishers. https://branditsummers.com/Public-Writing Mon, 16 Dec 2019 19:34:05 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Public-Writing ⎯⎯Public Writing⎯⎯ Public scholarship and academic essays written for a general audience <img width="1024" height="683" width_o="1024" height_o="683" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d21edc3929e9827639e01c16bafcbc6c289431a4680d27cce906c539c18e4a01/BLM-DC.jpg" data-mid="74493758" border="0" data-scale="51" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d21edc3929e9827639e01c16bafcbc6c289431a4680d27cce906c539c18e4a01/BLM-DC.jpg" /> “We Need Action to Accompany Art” The Boston Globe (June 11, 2020) This solicited op-ed offers a critical lens to view state-sanctioned public art as “black aesthetic emplacement.” <img width="241" height="214" width_o="241" height_o="214" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a0f4fc9ee47bb24b943b201ff21a253cf1c4a6fbbc5df8408bf01c2e08b92199/Screen-Shot-2020-05-19-at-6.20.03-AM.png" data-mid="71599199" border="0" data-scale="40" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/241/i/a0f4fc9ee47bb24b943b201ff21a253cf1c4a6fbbc5df8408bf01c2e08b92199/Screen-Shot-2020-05-19-at-6.20.03-AM.png" /> “Race and the Quarantined City/What Black America Knows About Quarantine” The New York Times (May 15, 2020) This solicited op-ed discusses the long history of Black spatial containment and marginalization in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. <img width="2048" height="1048" width_o="2048" height_o="1048" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fc5e4c795ba81cfba469bcf465353ca166d7500e11da8f223b3c2428de2d91d0/PS.jpg" data-mid="56763680" border="0" data-draggable src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fc5e4c795ba81cfba469bcf465353ca166d7500e11da8f223b3c2428de2d91d0/PS.jpg" /> <img width="960" height="540" width_o="960" height_o="540" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4a5092dc185c5840615531bd1a7720972a77b4a7b127d71d8c992d996f4bf4da/public_seminar_preview_960x540.png" data-mid="56763995" border="0" data-draggable src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/960/i/4a5092dc185c5840615531bd1a7720972a77b4a7b127d71d8c992d996f4bf4da/public_seminar_preview_960x540.png" /> Black Aesthetic/Aesthetic Black: Race, Space, and the Possibilities of Becoming Public Seminar (May 2018) This solicited piece&nbsp;discusses the productivity of blackness, and the mutual constitution of “black aesthetics” and “blackness as an aesthetic.” <img width="560" height="420" width_o="560" height_o="420" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4d6052cb07e05f3efde0eb6706d871bec6015346502323d9dd78412034e9e67e/public-books.jpg" data-mid="56764195" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/560/i/4d6052cb07e05f3efde0eb6706d871bec6015346502323d9dd78412034e9e67e/public-books.jpg" /> <img width="400" height="400" width_o="400" height_o="400" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ba0c2b604bbd0c79bb018d83c6677b62e7c25f2c4abe3d7e28f515e9551c94f9/public-books_650px_400x400.jpg" data-mid="56764222" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/400/i/ba0c2b604bbd0c79bb018d83c6677b62e7c25f2c4abe3d7e28f515e9551c94f9/public-books_650px_400x400.jpg" /> “Black Lives Under Surveillance” Public Books (December 2016) A review essay&nbsp;on Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness and Keeanga-Yamhatta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation that draws connections between race, surveillance, and capitalism. https://branditsummers.com/Projects Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:52 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Projects ⎯⎯Projects⎯⎯ <img width="1000" height="650" width_o="1000" height_o="650" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4f8d08cc3b50f8cec2b433ef9c77c6bc877e1d0e64fece8841354a839799bee9/IMG_2264.jpg" data-mid="169592627" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4f8d08cc3b50f8cec2b433ef9c77c6bc877e1d0e64fece8841354a839799bee9/IMG_2264.jpg" />Image Credit: Maya Sapienza ARCHIVE OF URBAN FUTURES: OAKLAND The Archive of Urban Futures (“the Archive”) is a collaborative project with Moms 4 Housing, generously supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place program. The Archive focuses on questions of history, value, the right to place, and memory and erasure in Oakland, California. The Archive will take the form of a database of material about Oakland and visions of and for its future over time, as well as related activities including community-based workshops, institutes, and art/exhibitions. The Archive is an effort to anticipate possibility by assembling histories of Oakland that are not reducible to its already well-documented experiences of racialized inequality and dispossession, while at the same time we recognize the ways that racism is always and already a productive enterprise. Or, as Saidiya Hartman (2008) writes, “to imagine what cannot be verified…to reckon with the precarious lives which are visible only in the moment of their disappearance” (p. 12). Engaging historically displaced, dispossessed, and disenfranchised urban communities as interpreters and investigators disrupts what counts as knowledge and allows for an expansive reading of archival data into alternative historical narratives – surmising not only what happened in the past, but also what could have been.The work of The Archive was featured in the Oakland Museum of California’s (OMCA) Black Spaces: Reclaim &amp; Remain exhibit.Selected Press for Black Spaces: Reclaim &amp; Remain:KQED ‘Black Spaces’ at the Oakland Museum Meditates on Displacement and Reclamation NBC Bay Area ‘Black Spaces: Reclaim &amp; Remain': New exhibition at Oakland Museum of California The Oaklandside ‘There are Black people in the future’: Oakland Museum exhibit documents displacement and resistance SFist Field Notes: 'Black Spaces' at OCMA, East Bay Skyline Trail Hike, and Tenderloin Museum Turns 10 UC Berkeley News UC Berkeley student collective Archive of Urban Futures shines at new OMCA exhibit The Guardian ‘Our dreams were shattered’: the Black Californians forced from the city they built East Bay Times/Mercury News Former residents remember Russell City after historic passage of reparation fund: Museum exhibit examines the triumph and tragedy of Russell City’s history The Daily Californian Exhibit by campus students, faculty uncovers Black history in Oakland SF Chronicle 'Black Spaces' at OMCA traces the past and future of Black communities in the East Bay East Bay Express Black spaces speak: Stories of resilience and future-building echo through the East Bay at Oakland Museum's latest exhibition &nbsp; Previous Projects https://branditsummers.com/Teaching Mon, 18 Jul 2022 23:31:16 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Teaching ⎯⎯Teaching⎯⎯ BLACK GEOGRAPHIES This graduate seminar explores the inextricable connection between blackness and geography. Considering Katherine McKittrick’s claim that Black geographies are “‘the terrain of political struggle itself’ or where the imperative of a perspective of struggle takes place,” we will situate the spatial relations of blackness by placing Black people at the core of spatial production and examine the mechanisms by which this takes place. In this course we ask: what are the limitations and possibilities of traditional geographies? How does Black geographic thought produce wider material and conceptual space for geographic knowledge? How does Geography account for and understand blackness as condition, experience, and imaginary? THE URBAN EXPERIENCE: RACE, CLASS, GENDER &amp; THE AMERICAN CITY This undergraduate course charts how the American city has been built, experienced, (re)imagined, and transformed. Using recent scholarship and primary sources, we track the historical evolution of the city and assess change and continuity in major themes of urban life: race and difference, industry and labor, economies and ecologies, community and culture, and power and politics. These themes become increasingly intertwined throughout the course. We will focus on the particularities of place and the experiences of ordinary people but also seek to understand how broader political and economic processes shape the inequalities and opportunities that structure everyday life. BLACK SITES &amp; SIGHTS: VISUAL MEDIA AND RACE The purpose of this course is to analyze the subject of race by examining racialized bodies in visual culture and the ways that U.S. visual media approaches race as topic of discussion in the public sphere. &nbsp;We will consider the discursive production and reproduction of race within various contexts: fashion, television, music, new media, and more. We explore a range of social and cultural theory approaches to understanding visual representations of race and racial diversity. While much of the prevailing research on race and the media focuses on a politics of representation that is either concerned with the invisibility of marginalized groups in the visual sphere, or identifying stereotypical portrayals of people of color, this course highlights the hegemonic discourses that place race both at the center and margins of American social, political, and economic culture. One of the main objectives for the course is to analyze the relationship between dominant social and political structures, marginalized identities, and subjectivity. To do so, we interrogate the politics of representing race in U.S. visual media within broader economic, political, and cultural contexts. URBAN SITES &amp; CITY LIFE This upper division undergraduate course explores historical, cultural, and socio-economic geographies of cities, city life, and the organization of metropolitan political power. It is primarily focused on the U.S., but will draw on select examples from abroad. We investigate urbanization as a general process and the resulting physical, social, cultural, and political economic forms of cities and examine the ways that cities have addressed tensions emerging from segregation and urban renewal. We also look at both the ways in which social inequality is reinforced through the politics, policies, and design of the built environment as well as strategies for fostering and nurturing inclusive and equitable urban spaces through city design and policy. This examination of the changing economic, cultural, social, and political dynamics of cities will include considerations of race, class, gender, and ethnicity in the context of urban life as a way of exploring how identity and place shape one another. Additionally, we will explore changes in the planning, politics and governance practices that shape the cities we live in. RACE, AESTHETICS &amp; THE GENTRIFIED CITY This seminar focuses on how race and aesthetics are embedded in the political, economic, and cultural processes of “urban revitalization.” In particular, we will talk about the ways that race and aesthetics figure into global urban gentrification processes and practices. For example, how might we consider murals as tools of gentrification, despite their radical history? Too often aesthetics are seen as a by-product of gentrification, not an integral part of it. Familiar attempts to “beautify” the city have a huge impact on determining who belongs and who doesn’t belong in public spaces. These urban aesthetics often draw on race to determine who and what we see in the urban landscape. Throughout the course, we focus on visual and written accounts of gentrification that focus on various elements: architecture, public art, graffiti, cultural tourism, and more. We also take a look at the cultural and aesthetic strategies marginalized groups organize to resist urban displacement. ART OF DARKNESS: PERSPECTIVES ON AFRICAN &amp; AFRICAN AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY ART Blackness—referencing race, color, or both—has had profound meaning and usefulness in the history of modern art. This seminar is designed to offer students the opportunity to explore multiple representations and discourses of blackness in contemporary art, produced by African diasporic artists. To do so, we will discuss and analyze the works of artists such as Lorna Simpson, Faith Ringgold, Carrie Mae Weems, Mickalene Thomas, Kara Walker, Glen Ligon, Adrian Piper, Wangechi Mutu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Hank Willis Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley.&nbsp;We advance some of the latest theories of black art and aesthetics to think through African and African American contemporary art from various perspectives. These texts will provide us the opportunity to use multiple visual and methodological strategies to analyze examples of painting, sculpture, photography, film, popular visual culture, and performance art in their cultural, political, and scientific contexts. https://branditsummers.com/Events Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:52 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Events ⎯⎯Upcoming Events⎯⎯ 2025 December 10 Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture New York, NY “Reparations, Resistance &amp; Radical Imagination: Queen Mother Moore” - Conversation with Professor Ashley Farmer Past Events 2025 AprilBarnard CollegeNew York, NY Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Distinguished Lecture FebruaryEmory UniversityAtlanta, GA James Weldon Johnson Institute’s Race and Difference Colloquium Series 2024 NovemberUC Berkeley CED Colloquium - Justice By DesignEquity + the Archive October Stanford University Palo Alto, CAModel Scholar Lecture Series OctoberYale University New Haven, CTEndeavors Lecture Series March Northeastern University at Mills College Oakland, CAbell hooks symposium: Black Feminist Worldmaking March Berkeley Arts Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) Berkeley, CAThe Underground Railroad screening + Conversation w/ Barry Jenkins FebruaryCritical Approaches to Black Media ConferenceNew Orleans, LAPaper: “Escape from Oakland: Afrosurreal Futures of a Black City” February Berkeley Arts Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) Berkeley, CADrylongso screening + Conversation w/ Cauleen Smith 2023 SeptemberTulane UniversityNew Orleans, LA Public Lecture Series, Department of Sociology May UC DavisDavis, CA Geography Group Colloquium April&nbsp; Sankofa BooksWashington, DCBook Talk: Black in Place April&nbsp;George Washington UniversityWashington, DCMcGrath Lecture in Urban Planning and Geography March Papanek Symposium - Design Anthropology: Critical Speculation Spatial Ecologies panel (online) FebruaryNew York UniversityNew York, NYUrban Research Seminar Series 2022 November&nbsp;Columbia UniversitySeeing the Valley, Facing the Acropolis: Symposium in Honor of Steven Gregory“Spatial Politics Against Global Anti-Blackness” panel SeptemberMuseum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) Black Food Summit “Design” panel (moderator) May&nbsp;University of Sheffield, Department of Urban Studies and Planning Seminar Series (online) AprilUniversity of Washington - Tacoma, School of Urban StudiesDebra Friedman Memorial Lecture “Echoes of a Chocolate City: Race, Aesthetics and Black Urbanism” (online) AprilUC Santa Cruz, Center for Cultural StudiesColloquium Series “Spatial Temporalities: The Future-Pasts of Black Dispossession (online) MarchBoston UniversityUrban Inequalities Workshop (online) February Princeton University, School of Architecture (Princeton, NJ) Womxn in Design and Architecture (WDA) conference&nbsp; FebruaryNew York University, Center for Black Visual CulturePanel: “Home Displaced” (online) FebruaryUniversity of Michigan, Taubman College Under Consideration: Session IX (online) January University of Southern California, School of Architecture Spring Lecture Series (online) 2021 November&nbsp;UCLA - Geography Department Geography Colloquium“Spatial Temporalities: The Future-Pasts of Black Dispossession” (online) October&nbsp;Columbia University - Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) Lectures in Planning Series (LiPS) “Spatial Temporalities: The Future-Pasts of Black Dispossession” (online) October&nbsp;UC Berkeley - African American StudiesCritical Conversations Speakers Series - “Skyrise: June Jordan’s Architectural Imaginary” w/ Olalekan Jeyifous and Mabel O. Wilson (online) July&nbsp; Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Structural Racism, Health, and COVID-19 panel&nbsp; (online) JulyUrban Frontiers: A Conference on Gentrification Studies“Black Joy as Recovery and the Fight Against Place Annihilation” for “Debates on Gentrification” panel (online) April CUNY Grad Center - The Center for Place, Culture, and PoliticsFrom “Upscaling” to Uhauling: Perspectives on Black/Queer Gentrification in Conversation w/ J. Jack Gieseking and Desirée Fields (online) April UC Berkeley - African American StudiesCritical Conversations Speakers Series - “Black Feminist Geographies of Emancipation” w/ Savannah Shange (online) March UC Berkeley - Architecture &amp; Global Metropolitan Studies Olalekan Jeyifous + Brandi T. Summers: “(Im)permanence, Improvisation, and our Absurdist Future” (online) March University of Oxford Rothermere American Institute RAI Goes to the Movies - Sorry to Bother You + Blindspotting Panel (online) February&nbsp; SF Urban Film Fest Where the Pavement Ends Live Panel &nbsp;(online) February University of Maryland - Urban Planning Seminar Group Reframing Social + Spatial Justice in 2020-2021 (online) February University of Cambridge - Conservation Research Institute CUGS: The Geographies of Racial Capitalism panel (online) January Rice University Racism and Racial Experiences (RARE) Workgroup (online) 2020 December University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) Living Through Upheaval: Under Fire (online) November International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Authors Meet Critics (online) November University of Leicester Geography Research Seminar (online) November D.C. History Conference Letitia Woods Brown lecture (online) November UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Lecture - “A Tale of Two Cities: Black Insurgent Aesthetics &amp; the Public Imaginary” (online) November&nbsp; Design Museum of Chicago + blkHaUS studios Raising Products Series (online) October University of Kentucky Department of Geography Colloquium Series&nbsp;(online) October UC Berkeley - Network for a New Political Economy Race and the Political Economy panel (online) October UC Berkeley - Social Science Matrix Author Meets Critic: Black in Place(online) October&nbsp; Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum A Right to the City - A Conversation with Brandi Summers&nbsp;(online) June University of ChicagoRace &amp; Capitalism ProjectCOVID-19 and Racial Inequities: Unpacking the Anti-Black Response (online) June Mills CollegeKnowledge for Freedom: “Black Study” and the Present Struggle, A Conversation with Nikhil Pal Singh, Savannah Shange, and Brandi Thompson Summers (online) April Next City Webinar Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (online) April University of California, Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies Lecture Series (online) April University of California, BerkeleySCiPP’s 10th Annual Race &amp; Policy Symposium (online) March UC Berkeley - Department of Geography Berkeley Black Geographies Symposium February Mills College Black to the Future: Blackness, Space, &amp; Power in Changing Times--A Conversation between Alicia Garza and Brandi Thompson Summers February&nbsp; Princeton University School of Architecture Princeton-Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment February Politics &amp; Prose (Washington, DC) Book talks: Democracy’s Capital and Black in Place 2019 June&nbsp; Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) “The Corner: Spatial Aesthetics and Black Bodies in Place” June Université Paris-Dauphine (Paris, France) Race in the Marketplace Symposium “A Haute [Ghetto] Mess: Black Authenticity and Visual Artifice in Vogue Italia”&nbsp; April Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University “Unmaking a Chocolate City: Spatial Aesthetics of Race and the Gentrifying Urban Landscape” April Hollins University “Unmaking a Chocolate City: Spatial Aesthetics of Race and the Gentrifying Urban Landscape” April American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (Washington, DC) “Chocolate Lives in a Post-Chocolate City” “Consuming Black Space and Culture: Race, Authenticity, and Quality-of-Life Aesthetics in Washington, D.C.” “Washington’s ‘Atlas District’ and the New Regime of Diversity” March SXSW EDU Conference &amp; Festival “Imagination &amp; Ingenuity: Prison as Learning Space” (panel discussion) January&nbsp;University of Oregon SLOW LAB at the College of Design “The Corner: Spatial Aesthetics and Black Bodies in Place” 2018 December Rush University Hospital (Chicago, IL)“The Life, Limits, and Longevity of (Institutional) Bias in the Workplace” Afrikana Film Festival (Richmond, VA) Post-screening interview with Boots Riley, director of “Sorry to Bother You” November American Studies Association Annual Meeting (Atlanta, GA) “Racial Architectures of Urban Space” November (anti)Blackness in the American Metropolis Workshop (Baltimore, MD) “Spatial Aesthetics and Black Bodies in Place” SeptemberHoward UniversityBroken Landscapes: Local Perspectives on Black Architects and Planners Since 1968“Geographies of Blackness in a Post-Chocolate City” June Progressive Connexions (Palermo, Italy) Fashion and Photography: An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Project “A Haute [Ghetto] Mess: Black Authenticity and Visual Artifice in Vogue Italia” May American University Sharing Space: Examining African American and Latino Intercultural Exchanges in Dynamic Neighborhoods Symposium “Revitalized Displacement: The Mark of Diversity in a Gentrifying Commercial Corridor” May University of RichmondArc of Racial Justice Institute “The Art of Inclusion and Community Engaged Research” April&nbsp;Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) “The Art of Inclusion and Community Engaged Research” April University of Pennsylvania “Black Aesthetics/Aesthetic Blackness” April American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting (New Orleans, LA) “Black Geographies and the Spatial Containment of Race” January&nbsp;Modern Languages Association Annual Meeting (New York, NY) “The Corner: Black Bodies, Spatial Aesthetics, and DC’s Go-Go Economy” 2017 November American University&nbsp;Metropolitan Policy Center “Shifting Cultural Landscapes in Chocolate City” October University of California, BerkeleyBlack Geographies Symposium “Neoliberalism and Black Containment” SeptemberAfrikana Film Festival (Richmond, VA) Post-screening interview with Amanda Seales August&nbsp;American Sociological Association Annual Meeting (Montréal, Quebec) “Fear and Loathing (of Others) in Washington, D.C.” June&nbsp;Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities (Hempstead, NY) “Queer Imaginations of Black Beauty” March&nbsp;Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL) “Haute [Ghetto] Mess: Post-Racial Aesthetics and the Seduction of Blackness in High Fashion” 2016 November American Studies Association Annual Meeting (Denver, CO) “The Changing Face of a Black Place: Spatializing Nostalgia and Cultural Tourism“ November National Women’s Studies Association Annual Meeting (Montréal, Quebec) “Street Life: Black Bodies and Spatial Aesthetics in a Post-Chocolate City” November&nbsp;Georgetown University “The Politics of Soul Style: Fashion, Race and African American History” October Association for the Study of African American Life and History Annual Meeting (Richmond, VA) “Diversity as Tableau: Race, Space, and Redevelopment in Washington, D.C.” October&nbsp;Center for Worker Education City College of New York “Black Bodies, Spatial Aesthetics, and DC’s Go-Go Economy” July&nbsp;Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum (Washington, DC) Book Forum: Capital Dilemma “Race and Change in the Atlas District” March National Council for Black Studies Annual Meeting (Charlotte, NC) “The Corner: Black Bodies, Spatial Aesthetics, and DC’s Go-Go Economy” February&nbsp;American University Urban Studies Humanities Lab “Race and Urban Aesthetics in Washington, D.C.” 2015 October&nbsp;New York University Institute for Public Knowledge “Un/Making Blackness: On the Aesthetic Discourses of Post-Race and Urban Space” September&nbsp;Association for the Study of African American Life and History Annual Meeting (Atlanta, GA) “Selling Haute Pu$$y: Defining an Aesthetic Market for Blackness in High Fashion” August&nbsp;Association of Black Sociologists Annual Meeting (Chicago, IL) “Black Bodies, Diverse Spaces: Neoliberal Aesthetics of Cool in a Post-Chocolate City” April American University “Hot Food/Haute Cuisine: Aesthetics, Race, and Authenticity in the Atlas District” https://branditsummers.com/Media Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:52 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/Media ⎯⎯Selected Media⎯⎯ 2025 Quoted in KQED, “‘Black Spaces’ at the Oakland Museum Mediates on Displacement and Reclamation,” (July 18) Quoted in The Washington Post, “The house color that tells you when a neighborhood is gentrifying,” (March 2) 2024 Quoted in Washington Post, “A Pizzeria’s Mockery of Marion Barry Struck A Nerve in a Changed D.C.” (November 2) Interviewed for ABC News Bay Area, “Attacks Against Vice President Kamala Harris Highlight Underlying Issues of Misogynoir” (July 23) Interviewed for KQED, “Moms 4 Housing and UC Berkeley Researchers Create and Archive for Activism,” (May 31) Interviewed for ABC News Bay Area, “California’s Case for Reparations: ‘We Are History in the Making’” (April 4) Interviewed for NBC San Diego, “How the Realtor Settlement May Impact Home Sellers and Buyers in San Diego” (March 17) 2023 Quoted in Landscape Architecture Magazine, “Past Imperfect” (June 29) Interviewed for ABC News Bay Area, “Remembering the ‘Harlem of the West’: A Local Musician’s Mission to Preserve Oakland’s Blues Culture” [video] (February 27) 2022 Interviewed for Tales of the Town podcast, “Houselesness in Oakland” (October 25) Quoted in KQED, “’A Lesson in Discrimination’: A Toxic Sea Level Rise Crisis Threatens West Oakland” (September 13) 2021 Quoted in New York Times,”Revitalizing Black Neighborhoods by Preserving Their History” (November 23) Interviewed for 1919Radio podcast, “Gentrifying Blackness with Dr. Brandi Summers” (June 18) Interviewed for Community Visions podcast, “Gentrification &amp; Criminalization” (June) Quoted in Los Angeles Times, “As Immigrants Seek Refuge, America Struggles to Live up to its Promise” (May 6) Interviewed for NPR’s Woke History podcast, “Black in Place” (March 17) Quoted in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, “Scholars View Washington, D.C.’s Statehood Prospects” (January 28) Interviewed for New Dawn podcast, “Neoliberalism and Gentrification in a Chocolate City” (January 22) 2020 Interviewed on Aljazeera The Stream, “’Residue’: What is Lost to Gentrification?” (December 2) Interviewed for New Books Network podcast, “Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City” (November 4) Quoted in DCist, “What does D.C.’s Black Lives Matter Plaza Mean to D.C. Residents? It Depends on Who You Ask” (August 27) Interviewed on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, “What Black Lives Matter Plaza Means To Washingtonians” (August 25) Interviewed for The Real News Network, “Thinking Beyond Representation: Progressives Weigh in on Harris’ Past” (August 14) Quoted and cited in New York Times, “Riots Long Ago, Luxury Living Today” (July 10) Interviewed for The Monocle Weekly podcast, “The Thinkers Edition: Life in the City” [audio] (July 5) Quoted in&nbsp;San Francisco Chronicle, “How 6 Feet of Social Distance is Changing the Relationship with Our Own Space” (June 1) Interviewed for Political Misfits, “Pandemic, Privatization, a Battle in Brasilia, Black in Aesthetic Only” [audio] (May 7) Interviewed for Washingtonian, “Horace and Dickie’s is Closing: What That Means for D.C.’s Black-Owned Businesses” (February 13) Interviewed for Interstitial podcast, “Black in Place” [audio] Interviewed for Unravel podcast, “Fashion and Architecture in Place: Interview with Dr. Brandi T. Summers” [audio]&nbsp; 2019 Quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “When Faculty of Color Feel Isolated” (October 22) Quoted in Univision, "‘Vete a tu país’: lo que esconde la frase preferida de los racistas que ahora también usa Trump” (July 21) Interviewed on Richmond NBC12, “Digital Dialogue: A Conversation about Race, Politics in Virginia” (February 12) [video] Quoted in ABC News, “Virginia blackface scandals a reminder of racist practice and its traumatic effect on African-Americans” (February 9) 2018 Featured in Richmond Magazine, “Roll the Clip” (December 5) Cited on Me My Thoughts and Eyes podcast, “Feeling Good, Feeling Great” (October 17) Quoted in Equal Times, “The Steady Decline of African-American Culture in Washington, D.C.” (August 22) Quoted in Glamour, “Why Do We See So Much of Ourselves in Meghan Markle?” (May 18) Featured in RVA Magazine, “VCU Professors Take a Critical Look at Black Panther Film” (March 20) 2017 Quoted in The Guardian, “DC institution Ben’s Chili Bowl repaints famous mural - without Bill Cosby” (June 25) 2016 Interviewed for Top Rank podcast, “Elements of Style” [audio] Interviewed for Fox5NY Films, “Yellow Tape” [video] https://branditsummers.com/About Mon, 16 Dec 2019 17:56:52 +0000 Brandi T. Summers https://branditsummers.com/About ⎯⎯About⎯⎯ Dr. Brandi T. Summers is an Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS) and Director of Graduate Studies at Columbia University. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia in 2024, Dr. Summers was an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines the relationship between and function of race, space, urban infrastructure, and architecture. She is a contributing writer for Places Journal, and has published several articles and essays that analyze the relationship between race, power, aesthetics, and urbanization that appear in both academic and popular publications, including the New York Times, Boston Globe,&nbsp;Antipode, Urban Geography, Public Books, and The Funambulist. She is on the editorial boards of SOULS,&nbsp;Urban Geography, City &amp; Community, cultural geographies, Environment &amp; Planning D, Environment &amp; Planning F, and AAG Review of Books.&nbsp;She is also a member of the editorial collective for Antipode. Dr. Summers is the author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (University of North Carolina Press), which explores how aesthetics and race converge to locate or map blackness in Washington, D.C. In it, she demonstrates the way that competing notions of blackness structure efforts to raise capital and develop land in the gentrifying city. Her second book, Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City (under contract with the University of California Press), explores and highlights the roots and routes of this resistance and reclamation, not only as a response to urban gentrification and related economic policies, but also as a quest to think about the past, present, and future of a Black city. EducationDr. Summers received her BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania, her MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago, and earned an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.&nbsp; ⎯⎯Contact⎯⎯ For questions, consulting, or speaking inquiries, contact her&nbsp;here.&nbsp;