Position Title
Assistant Professor of American Studies & Design
I am an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Design. I focus on race, space, and memory. My current in-progress book manuscript is tentatively titled: The City of Radical Memory: Spaces of Home Front Repression and Resistance in the San Francisco Bay Area. Evolving out of my doctoral dissertation, the book is a study of memorial landscapes and the erasures of Black resistance against segregation during World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this project, I question accepted notions about public spaces, visibility, and appearances, while offering new insights into conflicts over heritage and cultural citizenship.
In addition, I am currently working on new research about policing, surveillance, and global infrastructures. In my work, I engage with students, scholars, and publics in various fields, including geography, architecture, planning, and critical military studies.
I received a PhD in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley. Before starting my current academic appointment, I was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in American Studies at UC Davis. At Davis, I collaborate in a specialty group investigating militarization, policing, and securitization. In addition, I was trained as an oral historian at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. I have previously worked as an architect and designer. I continue to engage with culture and the arts through an experimental landscape collective that operates under various pseudonyms. We have exhibited and published in numerous venues, including the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and the Harvard Design Magazine.
I will teach courses on technology, design research, and memory.
Visit my site to find more information, articles, resources, and contact form: http://javier.faculty.ucdavis.edu/