Oakland Echoes: Reimagining and Reclaiming the Black City
Brandi Summers, Professor
Geography
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
This project is part of a forthcoming book on how Black resistance has laid the foundation for movements and formations that reclaim space through public cultures, electoral and grassroots politics, and in the aesthetics of everyday life. The overall project explores and highlights the roots and routes of this resistance and reclamation, not only as a response to urban gentrification and related economic policies, but also as a quest to think about the past, present, and future of a Black city. Ultimately, the book argues that Black Oaklanders use a myriad of symbolic and material means – activism, consumption, recovery, escape, and adaptation – to reimagine and reclaim the Black city.
In addition to work on the book project, apprentices will be able to contribute to an ongoing racial impact analysis for the City of Oakland, which explores the ongoing effects of federal, state, and locally-subsidized policies (e.g., redlining, eminent domain, urban renewal, and gentrification) on the Black community in Oakland.
There will likely be a related project that will allow apprentices to help identify policy changes to help mitigate the negative effects of these policies on the Black community in Oakland.
Apprentices will have access to several tasks, and may switch among these three components, depending on their interests and experiences.
Role: The apprentices will conduct research for 4-6 hours a week for the duration of the semester. The URAP will be engaged with different aspects of research including qualitative data collection (e.g., interviews, focus groups). The apprentices will receive assignments and will participate in periodic meetings to share the results. As apprentices become more familiar with the project scope and expectations, Dr. Summers and apprentices can further develop assignments that support their research interests.
Qualifications: Apprentices must be detail-oriented, organized, and independent; contribute a minimum of 4 hours work per week to the project (exceptions made during midterm and finals periods); attend periodic meetings with fellow apprentices and Dr. Summers; conduct library and online research; write brief literature summaries and analytic memos; apprentices should also be interested in race, urban history, politics, and visual culture.
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Related website: https://branditsummers.com/
Arts & Humanities Social Sciences