New Dawn

In this episode of New Dawn, Michael Dawson invites Brandi Thompson Summers to the show. Summers is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Global Metropolitan Studies at the UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz. Her research engages theoretical themes that cut across multiple domains of social life. Summers builds epistemological and methodological insights from cultural and urban geography, urban sociology, African American studies, and media studies by examining the cultural, political, and economic dynamics by which race and space are reimagined and reordered. Her first book, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (UNC Press), explores how aesthetics and race converge to locate or map Blackness in Washington, D.C. Summers has published several articles and essays in both academic and popular publications, including the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, New York Times, Boston Globe, and The Funambulist.