Brandi Summers received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (UNC Press 2019). Her interdisciplinary research examines the relationship between and function of race, space, urban infrastructure, and architecture. Her second book, Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City (under contract with the University of California Press), explores the roots and routes of 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. Professor Summers is a Contributing Writer for Places Journal and has published several articles that appear in both scholarly and popular publications, including the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Antipode, and Urban Geography
Department and Institution:
Interim Director, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
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