Instructor:
What does it mean to call a place your home? Who can afford to live where you are from? What are the complex histories of the places where you come from, and what might you learn about yourself, your community, and the nation by asking questions about who was there before and how you yourself got there? This course explores the politics of space and displacement by reflecting deeply on the violent histories of removal and enslavement in the U.S. We will investigate how policies governing space, like development projects, housing policies, and public transportation infrastructures enact forms of poverty management and anti-Black politics. Through our course readings, we will learn the definitions and histories of terms like dispossession, speculative value, gentrification, bordering, and more. We will consider how the organization of space (something as simple as the arrangement of bus lines in the city or availability of sidewalks) impacts our experience of a place, and how these physical and psychic borders raise questions about our racial and gender positioning in relation to larger systems of racial and class oppression.