Rashad Shabazz, "Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago" [VIDEO]

MacMillan Hall, Room 117 (Starr Auditorium)

This talk will explore how carceral power and the techniques of containment were woven into the quotidian geographies of poor and working class Black people on Chicago's South Side. Through and examination of housing, policing, and the production of masculinity, this talk demonstrates how the explosion of Black incarceration rates in the latter 20th century were enabled by the geography of incarceration at the beginning of the century. 

Book signing and light reception to follow. Free and open to the public. 

Cosponsored by the Urban Studies Program.

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About Rashad Shabazz

Professor Rashad Shabazz's academic expertise brings together human geography, Black cultural studies, gender studies, and critical prison studies. His research explores how race, sexuality and gender are informed by geography. His most recent work (Spatializing Blackness, University of Illinois Press, 2015) examines how carceral power within the geographies of Black Chicagoans shaped urban planning, housing policy, policing practices, gang formation, high incarceration rates, masculinity and health. Shabazz's scholarship has appeared in SoulsThe Spatial-Justice JournalACMEGender, Place and Culture and Occasions and he has also published several book chapters and book reviews. He is currently working on two projects: the first examines how Black people use public spaces to negotiate and perform race, gender and sexual identity as well as to express political or cultural identity. The second project uncovers the role Black musicians in Minneapolis played in giving rise to “the Minneapolis sound”.

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