Live and Let Die: The Black Topologies of HIV/AIDS picks up where Cathy Cohen’s groundbreaking The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics left off. How are the politics of HIV/AIDS within black communities transformed when the disease and the populations at risk from it are no longer invisible but to an extent hypervisible? How are these politics shaped by broader changes in the political economy? This book length project will answer these questions. 

The Thick Blue Line: Policing and Social Control will use the case of Baltimore to examine shifts in the relationship between policing and urban denizens over time. In the wake of the Baltimore Uprising one fact looms large–spending on policing has increased more than 300% over the past 20 years while spending on a host of other priorities has stagnated. What causes the increase? How might we situate increases in police spending in a broader discussion about race, capital, and urban space?