Candace Borders awarded best conference paper at the National Conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History

November 6, 2019

Candace Borders, a second year PhD student in American Studies and African American Studies, received an award this month for a paper presented at the National Conference of the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH). Her paper titled “Towards a Method of Refusal: Black Women’s Housing Activism in St. Louis” was awarded the SACRPH Student Paper Prize for the best conference paper submitted by a full-time student. In the paper, Candace engages a framework of refusal to follow the life and activism of Jean King, a public housing resident and central leader of the St. Louis rent strike of 1969. The paper contends that the significance of King’s housing rights activism does not lie solely in her ability to redirect the power of the state. Rather, through her refusal of the opportunity for homeownership, and rejection of the linear developmental path to citizenship through property, King demonstrates an alternative relationship to public housing not bounded by state logics. Ultimately, the paper argues for the importance of a framework of refusal to access the many textures of Black women’s public housing organizing that aren’t always legible within studies of rights-based activism.

Congratulations!