Current Research
My research focuses on conceptualizations of race, the production of racial categories, and the material consequences of these formations. It is broadly qualitative and utilizes a variety of methods including oral histories, archival work, discourse analysis, group and individual interviews, and life and work histories. Most recently, I have been examining Latino migration to the U.S. South and the reworkings of race, ethnicity, and belonging this migration has precipitated in southern cities. Through an extended study of Nashville, Tennessee, I analyze the impacts of Latino migration on racial and immigrant politics within and across a number of social spaces and institutions, including workplaces, public schools, residential neighborhoods, and so on. Work on this project will continue through 2008 and will form the basis of future inter-urban comparative work on new immigrant destinations.

I have recently begun a new research project with Barbara Ellen Smith, director of women's studies at Virginia Tech. Centered on deindustrialized towns with growing immigrant populations in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas, this study will examine immigrants' and long-term southern residents' intertwining practices of flexible labor and social reproduction in the U.S. South. Blending an analysis of neoliberal globalization's flexible-labor demands through attention to the body and an interrogation of social reproduction's spatial forms and politics through engagement with place, this project will investigate what is at stake in increasingly tense political and social dynamics vis-a-vis immigration across the rural South. This multi-sited study will involve graduate students at both universities.

In addition to these two main projects, I have interests in the historical geographies of the U.S. South, particularly the links between the Reconstruction South and nineteenth-century imperialism. Drawing on postcolonial theory , I have examined these connections through postbellum travel accounts of the South and their textual strategies for describing the region, its landscapes, and its residents. Building on my interests in Latino migration and transnationalism, I also have interests in the ways that race and ethnicity operate in Mexico and are being reconfigured through processes such as globalization and transnational migrations.

Selected Publications
Forthcoming. "Race." International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, eds. Elsevier Press.

Forthcoming (Spring 2009). "Hispanic Men and Women." The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Gender Volume. Ted Ownby and Nancy Bercaw, eds. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Forthcoming. "Tennessee." Latino America Series. Mark Overmyer-Valezqeuz, ed. Greenwood Press.

Forthcoming. "Placing Latino Migration and Migrant Experiences in the U.S. South: The Complexities of Regional and Local Trends." Global Connections and Local Receptions: New Latino Immigration to the Southeastern U.S. Jon Shefner and Fran Ansley, eds. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

2008. "An 'Incomplete' Picture? Race, Latino Migration, and Urban Politics in Nashville, Tennessee." Urban Geography 29.3: 246-263.

2008. "'We're Here to Stay': Economic Restructuring, Latino Migration, and Place-Making in the U.S. South." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 33: 60-72, with Barbara Ellen Smith.

2008. "Nashville's New Sonido: Latino Migration and the Changing Politics of Race." New Faces in New Places: The Changing Geography of American Immigration. Douglas Massey, ed. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 249-273. 

2007. "Bringing Back the (B)order: Post-9/11 Politics of Immigration, Borders, and Belonging in the Contemporary U.S. South." Antipode 39.5: 920-942.

2007. "Mapping the Grassroots: NGO Formalisation in Oaxaca, Mexico." Journal of International Development 18: 1-15, with Sarah Moore, Oliver Froehling, John Paul Jones III, and Susan Roberts.

2006. "Rethinking Southern Communites, Reconfiguring Race: Latino Migration to the US South." American Literature 78.4: 699-700.

2006. "'New Americans' in a 'New South' City? Immigrant and Refugee Politics in the Music City." Social and Cultural Geography 7.3: 421-435.

2006. “Placing Latinos in the Music City: Latino Migration and Urban Politics in Nashville, Tennessee.” Latinos in the New South: Transformations of Place. Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth, eds. Ashgate Publishing, 167-190.

2005. “Imperfectly Imperial: Northern Travel Writers in the Postbellum U.S. South, 1865-1880.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95.2: 391-410.

2005. “Making Güeras: Selling White Identities on Late-Night Mexican Television.” Gender, Place, and Culture 12.1: 71-93 (with John Paul Jones III and Michael Higgins).

2003. “White in All the Wrong Places: White Rural Poverty in a Postbellum US South.” Cultural Geographies 10: 45-63.

2001. “On the Outside of ‘In’: Power, Participation, and Representation in Oral Histories.” Historical Geography 29: 45-52