University of California, Los Angeles
Department Member, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History
Center for Social Theory and Comparative History, Visiting Scholar
University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis Title: Mortifications of the Flesh: Racial Discipline in a Time of Crisis
About
I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UC Los Angeles and a recent UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow. I am also a graduate of the Interdisciplinary Studies program at UC Berkeley (B.A) and the Ethnic Studies department at UC San Diego (Ph.D). My work is at the intersections of cultural studies, critical theory, ethnic studies, visual culture and critical legal studies and examines the processes through which racial violence in the interest of capital and state building in the US is normalized.
More specifically, my work is a comparative study of African Americans and Latinos and develops a an integrated understanding of the material relations of racialization that arise out of the histories of state violence. My forthcoming book, titled "Mortifications of the Flesh: Racial Discipline in a Time of Crisis," maps out the material and discursive terrain of the visual regimes of race and punishment in relation to state practices.
My newest research traces jailed populations in Los Angeles through academic and municipal discourses within the political and economic history of the city. It asks: How is the jailed population constructed outside of the realm of the universal human? What is the relationship between this population and Los Angeles' neo-liberal global economy? In this project the jail exists as a crucial site of examination to better understand the work of population management and human relations.
I have extensive and varied teaching experience: I have lectured at the Cesar E. Chavez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction at UC Los Angeles and in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC San Diego. I have designed and developed many courses, including "Immigration and the State," "The US-Mexico Border: A Global Comparative Perspective", "Visual Culture: Representations of Race and the State", “Race and Reconstruction: The Development of the Criminal Body,” “Discourse and Production of Racial Knowledge,” and the "Political and Economic History of Race and Prisons".
In addition to my teaching experience, I also served as the Program Director of the Chicano Latino Policy Project at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at UC Berkeley and as Project Director at the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty as UCLA.
