Department of American Studies

The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence exposes the racism and xenophobia encoded in urban infrastructure—from highways cleaving neighborhoods of color to laws and policies fortifying even more unbreachable boundaries. This synthesis of narrative and theory resurrects neglected episodes of state violence and reveals how the built environment that continues to enable it today. Examples from the histories and presents of major American cities link the physical and legal structures confining residents to formerly redlined neighborhoods and locking away some of those same residents in prisons.