Brandi Thompson Summers
Biographic Data
| ID | 201028 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brandi Thompson Summers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brandi Thompson |
| FAMILY NAME | Summers |
| SIGNATURE | SUMMERS B T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3072-3595 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 84 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
When the margin is the center
This essay is an attempt to think through the current state and future possibilities of urban geography amid crisis. I draw on an approach to urban geography, coming from the traditions of Black Studies and Cultural Studies, that offers a vantage point from which to appreciate antiblack racism as the geographic precondition for excessive incarceration, deportation, and environmental degradation in the U.S. The provisioning and sustaining power of…
Speculative Urban Worldmaking
This article brings Black feminist thought to bear on the urban geography of racialised financial violence. Our analysis focuses on the Moms 4 Housing movement, which began when five Black mothers occupied a vacant, corporate investor‐owned house in West Oakland to protest how real estate speculation is fuelling displacement and homelessness for Black Oakland residents, disrupting care at the scale of the home and community. In taking space throu…
Coming into view
Reflecting on Bloch and Meyer's exploration of displacement-by-gentrification and their use of “aversive racism” to address a lack of serious engagement with race and racism in gentrification studies, I offer a conceptual tour of both gentrification and displacement, specifically how some scholars have defined both terms and used them to explore various dimensions of socio-spatial shifts. Then, I clarify the incompatibility of aversive racism and…
Urban phantasmagorias
Black insurgent aesthetics and the public imaginary
This article analyzes the spontaneous production of graffiti art and murals covering the entrances of businesses in the central business district of Oakland, CA, in the wake of the global protest movements, in 2020, against state violence and systemic racism. I argue that the art made legible what gets hidden through the violent processes of gentrification, neoliberal urbanism, and displacement/dispossession. The paper rethinks what borders, poli…
Reclaiming the chocolate city
In Washington, DC, Black residents have experienced unprecedented levels of cultural and physical displacement since 2000. Because of gentrification, the first "chocolate city," long been defined by its blackness, has experienced shifts in the economy and commitments by the local government, that privilege policies that facilitate the displacement of Black families. Everyday struggles against gentrification have been of wide-ranging theoretical c…
Black in Place
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 the H Street corridor. In this book, Brandi Thompson Summers documents D.C.’s shift to a “post-chocolate” cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street’s economic and racial developments. In doing so, she offers a theoretical framewor…
Fear and Loathing (of others)
Our article explores the cultural politics of public space and the placemaking politics of urban redevelopment in the Atlas District of Washington, DC, a popular commercial district undergoing rapid gentrification. The major questions we address are, how do race and class impact the ways public space is controlled and/or managed in the context of rapid changes in the built, economic and social environments of the neighborhood? What role do those …
Race as Aesthetic
This essay highlights the construction of black bodies as valuable in the fashion system as a mark of difference and evidence of diversity. Here, I also render the high fashion industry as a site of conflicting elements concerning the deployment and meaning of the black female body. To do so, I use a combined analysis of activism in the fashion industry, which calls for the representation of black models through the visible inclusion of more blac…
Michelle Ann Stephens, Skin acts
In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens provides a valuable contribution to the study of race and representation by offering a thorough account of the relationship between black skin and white gaze and
Troubling Vision
Reviewed by: Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness by Nicole Fleetwood Brandi Thompson Summers (bio) Fleetwood, Nicole. Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. In Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness, Nicole Fleetwood writes about the troubling reliance on visual narratives to represent the African American experience, which are often hailed as “true.” These prac…
More Beautiful and More Terrible
Imani Perry, MORE BEAUTIFUL AND MORE TERRIBLE: THE EMBRACE AND TRANSCENDENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, New York: New York University Press, 2011, xv + 248 pp., $22.00 (paper) Imani
Reclaiming the chocolate city
In Washington, DC, Black residents have experienced unprecedented levels of cultural and physical displacement since 2000. Because of gentrification, the first "chocolate city," long been defined by its blackness, has experienced shifts in the economy and commitments by the local government, that privilege policies that facilitate the displacement of Black families. Everyday struggles against gentrification have been of wide-ranging theoretical c…
Speculative Urban Worldmaking
This article brings Black feminist thought to bear on the urban geography of racialised financial violence. Our analysis focuses on the Moms 4 Housing movement, which began when five Black mothers occupied a vacant, corporate investor‐owned house in West Oakland to protest how real estate speculation is fuelling displacement and homelessness for Black Oakland residents, disrupting care at the scale of the home and community. In taking space throu…
Black insurgent aesthetics and the public imaginary
This article analyzes the spontaneous production of graffiti art and murals covering the entrances of businesses in the central business district of Oakland, CA, in the wake of the global protest movements, in 2020, against state violence and systemic racism. I argue that the art made legible what gets hidden through the violent processes of gentrification, neoliberal urbanism, and displacement/dispossession. The paper rethinks what borders, poli…
More Beautiful and More Terrible
Imani Perry, MORE BEAUTIFUL AND MORE TERRIBLE: THE EMBRACE AND TRANSCENDENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, New York: New York University Press, 2011, xv + 248 pp., $22.00 (paper) Imani
Fear and Loathing (of others)
Our article explores the cultural politics of public space and the placemaking politics of urban redevelopment in the Atlas District of Washington, DC, a popular commercial district undergoing rapid gentrification. The major questions we address are, how do race and class impact the ways public space is controlled and/or managed in the context of rapid changes in the built, economic and social environments of the neighborhood? What role do those …
Urban phantasmagorias
More Beautiful and More Terrible
Imani Perry, MORE BEAUTIFUL AND MORE TERRIBLE: THE EMBRACE AND TRANSCENDENCE OF RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES, New York: New York University Press, 2011, xv + 248 pp., $22.00 (paper) Imani
Troubling Vision
Reviewed by: Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness by Nicole Fleetwood Brandi Thompson Summers (bio) Fleetwood, Nicole. Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2011. In Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness, Nicole Fleetwood writes about the troubling reliance on visual narratives to represent the African American experience, which are often hailed as “true.” These prac…
Michelle Ann Stephens, Skin acts
In Skin Acts, Michelle Ann Stephens provides a valuable contribution to the study of race and representation by offering a thorough account of the relationship between black skin and white gaze and
Race as Aesthetic
This essay highlights the construction of black bodies as valuable in the fashion system as a mark of difference and evidence of diversity. Here, I also render the high fashion industry as a site of conflicting elements concerning the deployment and meaning of the black female body. To do so, I use a combined analysis of activism in the fashion industry, which calls for the representation of black models through the visible inclusion of more blac…
Black in Place
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 the H Street corridor. In this book, Brandi Thompson Summers documents D.C.’s shift to a “post-chocolate” cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street’s economic and racial developments. In doing so, she offers a theoretical framewor…
Fear and Loathing (of others)
Our article explores the cultural politics of public space and the placemaking politics of urban redevelopment in the Atlas District of Washington, DC, a popular commercial district undergoing rapid gentrification. The major questions we address are, how do race and class impact the ways public space is controlled and/or managed in the context of rapid changes in the built, economic and social environments of the neighborhood? What role do those …
Reclaiming the chocolate city
In Washington, DC, Black residents have experienced unprecedented levels of cultural and physical displacement since 2000. Because of gentrification, the first "chocolate city," long been defined by its blackness, has experienced shifts in the economy and commitments by the local government, that privilege policies that facilitate the displacement of Black families. Everyday struggles against gentrification have been of wide-ranging theoretical c…
Urban phantasmagorias
Black insurgent aesthetics and the public imaginary
This article analyzes the spontaneous production of graffiti art and murals covering the entrances of businesses in the central business district of Oakland, CA, in the wake of the global protest movements, in 2020, against state violence and systemic racism. I argue that the art made legible what gets hidden through the violent processes of gentrification, neoliberal urbanism, and displacement/dispossession. The paper rethinks what borders, poli…
Coming into view
Reflecting on Bloch and Meyer's exploration of displacement-by-gentrification and their use of “aversive racism” to address a lack of serious engagement with race and racism in gentrification studies, I offer a conceptual tour of both gentrification and displacement, specifically how some scholars have defined both terms and used them to explore various dimensions of socio-spatial shifts. Then, I clarify the incompatibility of aversive racism and…
Speculative Urban Worldmaking
This article brings Black feminist thought to bear on the urban geography of racialised financial violence. Our analysis focuses on the Moms 4 Housing movement, which began when five Black mothers occupied a vacant, corporate investor‐owned house in West Oakland to protest how real estate speculation is fuelling displacement and homelessness for Black Oakland residents, disrupting care at the scale of the home and community. In taking space throu…
When the margin is the center
This essay is an attempt to think through the current state and future possibilities of urban geography amid crisis. I draw on an approach to urban geography, coming from the traditions of Black Studies and Cultural Studies, that offers a vantage point from which to appreciate antiblack racism as the geographic precondition for excessive incarceration, deportation, and environmental degradation in the U.S. The provisioning and sustaining power of…
Sociology (10 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Visual arts (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (5 works)