René Esparza

René Esparza researches the racial and sexual politics of neoliberal urban social formations, particularly as these processes determine unequal health outcomes. He is the author of the upcoming manuscript From Vice to Nice: Race, Sex, and the Gentrification of AIDS, which identifies the spatial determinants of health in the differential allocation of HIV precarity. Through a geographical analysis of health that encompasses a queer and feminist theoretical framework, Esparza shows how residential segregation creates a pathway through which racial discrimination and economic impoverishment become embodied as ill health and vulnerability to disease. His second major project surveys the transnational nature of Latinx AIDS activism, comparing how the politics of racialization and the protracted inequalities of US citizenship, colonial statecraft, and immigration law have shaped Latinx experiences and responses to the AIDS pandemic.

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