Joseph Nevins
Joseph Nevins was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his PhD in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research interests include socioterritorial boundaries and mobility, violence and inequality, and political ecology; he has conducted research in East Timor, Mexico, the United States-Mexico border region, and the Greater Boston area.
Joseph Nevins was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and received his PhD in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His research interests include socioterritorial boundaries and mobility, violence and inequality, and political ecology; he has conducted research in East Timor, Mexico, and the United States-Mexico border region. His courses include: Geographies of Mass Violence; the Political Geography of Human Rights; Population, Resources and Sustainable Development; and Lines, Fences and Walls: The Partitioning of the Global Landscape. His non-academic writings have appeared in print and online in a variety of publications including Al Jazeera English, CounterPunch, Boston Review, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, NACLA Report on the Americas, The Nation, Tikkun, The Washington Post, and Z Magazine.
Departments and Programs
Selected Publications
Books
- Dying to Live: A Story of US Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid, with photographs by Mizue Aizeki, San Francisco: Open Media/City Lights Books, 2008.
- Co-authored with Suren Moodliar and Eleni Macrakis, A People's Guide to Greater Boston, Oakland: University of California Press, 2020.
- Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, New York: Routledge, 2010. (A significantly revised edition of Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, 2002.)
- Co-edited with Nancy Peluso, Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature, and People in the Neoliberal Age, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Also published by the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (Petaling Jaya, Malaysia) in 2009.
- A Not-So-Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. 2005. Updated version of 1st edition, entitled Pembantaian Timor Timur: Horor Masyarakat Internasional (translated into Indonesian by Nug Katjasungkana) published by Garba Budaya and Fortilos (Jakarta, Indonesia) in 2008.
Selected academic journal articles and book chapters
- Co-authored with Stephen Allen and Matt Watson, “A path to decolonization? Reducing air travel and resource consumption in higher education,” Travel Behaviour and Society, Vol. 26, January 2022: 231-239.
- "Co-authored with Adriana Provenzano, “Arming the Environment, and Colonizing Nature, Territory, and Mobility in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2019: 456-485.
- “The Speed of Life and Death: Migrant Fatalities, Territorial Boundaries, and Energy Consumption,” Mobilities, published online July 28, 2017; DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2017.1349392
- “The Right to the World,” Antipode, published online March 7, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/anti.12324
- Co-authored with Kenneth Wolkin, “No sovereign nation, no reservation’: producing the new colonialism in Cayuga Count(r)y,” Territory, Politics, Governance, published online October 6, 2016, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2016.1238318
- “Academic Jet-setting in a Time of Climate Destabilization: Ecological Privilege and Professional Geographic Travel,” The Professional Geographer, Vol. 66. No. 2014: 298-310.
- “A Matter of Life and Death: Human Rights at the Boundaries of Immigration Control,” in Lois Lorentzen (ed.), Hidden Lives and Human Rights in America: Understanding the Controversies and Tragedies of Undocumented Immigration, Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2014: 275-300.
- “Policing Mobility, Maintaining Global Apartheid—from South Africa to the United States,” in Jenna M. Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge (eds), Beyond Walls and Cages: Bridging Immigrant Justice and Anti-Prison Organizing in the United States, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2012: 19-26.
- “Embedded Empire: Structural Violence and the Pursuit of Justice in East Timor,” The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 99, No. 5, 2009: 914-921.
- “Dying for a Cup of Coffee? Migrant Deaths in the US-Mexico Border Region in a Neoliberal Age,” Geopolitics, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2007: 228-247. Abridged and translated version published in German in Wissenschaft & Frieden (Science & Peace), May 2008: 15-18.
- “Contesting the Boundaries of International Justice: State Countermapping and Offshore Resource Struggles Between Australia and East Timor,” Economic Geography, Vol. 80, No. 1, 2004: 1-22.
Grants, Fellowships, Honors, Awards
Joseph Nevins researches ties between the United Fruit Company and Boston
Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, is an awardee of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) for 2022. Professor Nevins’s fellowship will allow for eight weeks of archival research this summer on the ties between the United Fruit Company and Boston, where the corporation was founded and headquartered.
In the Media
Photos
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