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.
Once again, Americans are left reeling from the horror of video footage showing police brutalizing an unarmed Black man who later died. Some details in the latest case of extreme police violence were gut-wrenchingly familiar: a police traffic stop of a Black male motorist turned violent. But, for many of us, other details were unfamiliar: […]