Joaquin VillanuevaFaculty

I conducted my B.A. at the University of Puerto Rico. I majored in Modern Languages (French and Italian) and minored in Geography. Having spent a semester abroad in France I developed an interest in France's immigration and assimilation policies. I decided to study the lives, experiences, and relationships of various immigrant groups in France through the discipline of geography. In 2003 I began my M.A. degree in the Geography Department at Syracuse University. There I studied the politics of public space in Paris with a special focus on the inclusion/exclusion of minority groups in the new Les Halles, a centrally located public park in Paris. I continued in the Geography Department at Syracuse University for my Ph.D.

For my dissertation, I explored contemporary crime-control policies implemented in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the outskirts of Paris. Social housing estates located at the outskirts of Paris have tended to concentrate high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime among a population, the majority of immigrant extraction, that has not been able to fully integrate to France.  In my research I explored the ways in which populations in social housing estates in Seine-Saint-Denis, northeastern suburb of Paris, cope with high levels of socio-spatial exclusion. I explored, among many other factors, the eruption of occasional 'riots' in Seine-Saint-Denis.

Currently, my research has shifted regionally and thematically. I am working on a project that seeks to understand the origins of Puerto Rico's multiple economic, political, and environmental crises. I am wrting a book on the history of planning in Puerto Rico, from the 1930s through 1950s. Drawing on Frantz Fanon's revolutionary work, the project explores the transformation of the urban landscape by the Puerto Rico Planning Board in mid-twentieth century. It underscores how Puerto Rico's elite has made space for the US empire and its capital while alienating the "damnés," the poor, Black, working class, queer, and female subjects of empire. The book is in conversation with various scholarships across Black stuies, Puerto Rican studies, Caribbean studies, and Latinx geographies.  

I teach courses in human geography, including: introduction to human geography; urban geography; political geography; geographies of peace and violence; and race and space.

Courses Taught