Bench Ansfield

@benchansfield.bsky.social

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asst prof of history at temple // they/them BORN IN FLAMES: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City (W.W. Norton, August 19) https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324093510

Pulitzer Prizes 2026 listing the two finalists for the History category, including the poster's book, Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, along with Scott Anderson's King of Kings.
Image of book cover
Book cover for Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking and the American City
Image shows 5 nominees for the LA Times Book Prize in History, including OP's book Born in Flames.
Independent article from 1/21 with headline: “ICE is rumored to be heading for Philadelphia. Everyone js saying the same thing”
Course Description: This seminar will examine the emergence of the new history of capitalism: a synthesis of labor, economic, urban, and business history that has coalesced in the years since the Great Recession. Like the field more broadly, the course is anchored in the United States, but it adopts a hemispheric and global scope and is designed to be of interest to students across several areas of study. Our conversations will be grounded in a comparative analysis of various methodologies, scholarly interventions, and the dynamics of field formation. Particular emphasis will be placed on the recent efflorescence of work on racial capitalism, which posits a mutually constitutive relationship between racial formation and capitalist political economy
Screenshot of NYT citation of Born in Flames: "This elegant book dismantles conventional wisdom regarding the fires that ravaged the Bronx and other communities of color in the 1970s. Ansfield shows that most of these fires, which have always been blamed on tenants, were in fact set by landlords; racist housing and insurance practices made it more profitable to burn buildings than to rent them."
Flyer for the event "Front Tenements to Towers: Redlining, Resilience, and the Burning of the Bronx" at the Museum of the City of New York on 10/18 at 2:30. Features the cover of the book Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.
Two posters for the Born in Flames launch. OCTOBER 16 // 7pm // $7-15 Maysles Documentary Center Screening of Decade of Fire + Book Panel with organizer and writer Shellyne Rodriguez, director Vivian Vázquez, and Elliot Liu of Take Back the Bronx OCTOBER 18 // 2:30pm // $15-20 Museum of the City of New York In Conversation with Ritti Singh (Housing Justice for All and NYS Tenant Bloc) and curator of social activism Sarah Seidman
Screenshot of the SF Chronicle with the headline "How the Watts Uprising in LA led to the state's FAIR insurance plan"
Screenshot of Tracy Rosenthal's review in The New Republic of Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City.
A copy of today’s Sunday Times Book Review featuring Brian Goldstone’s review of BORN IN FLAMES. Alongside it is a copy of the book.
Two book covers are arrayed as if in a matchup. Bench Ansfield's Born in Flames vs. Klein and Thompson's Abundance.
Screenshot of the NYT website featuring Born in Flames by Bench Ansfield and Black Moses by Caleb Gayle
Screenshot of New Yorker article titled "Did Racial Capitalism Set the Bronx on Fire?" by Daniel Immerwahr
New York Post headline reading: "Greedy landlords - not Bronx residents - were really to blame for the fires that ravaged NYC in the '70s and '80s: new book"
Printout of zine: "How to Report ICE and Help Keep Our Neighbors Safe”
New York Times list of 22 Books Coming in August, featuring Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, out Aug 19
Flyer for book launch event featuring author Bench Ansfield and interlocutor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Four stickers against a pink background: 1) “we are born in flames” written against fire, 2) two arms clutching one another with “your risk is my risk” etched upon them, 3) a woman in a bathtub with the words “my home is not your asset” written on the tub, 4) an apartment building with a fire escape and clothesline, tomato and sunflower plant, and residents waving to each other, reading “tenants built this city”
I am sitting in front of flower garden holding a copy of my new book, BORN IN FLAMES.
SPATIALIZED CAPITALISM IN URBANISM’S SHADOW 02:00 PM-03:30 PM This session asks in what way are urban forms of occupation creatively sustained or politically disengaged by capital’s shadows? In the 21st-century city, the built environment is saturated with capital at the intersection point of an ensemble of technologies of power and resistance. The materiality of architecture and the built environment are defined by modalities of spatialization and measurement (data, mappings, and recordings) that can empower or disenfranchise those who are its inadvertent consumers or targets. A full spectrum of analogue and digital modes of representing income, race, displacement, abandonment, removal, resources, movement, and construction controls the access and appropriation of space.
STOP MUSK: SAVE OUR SERVICES RALLY Wednesday February 19 Market and 5th and 6th St
Screenshot of article by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: "The Bronx is Burning: Urban Disinvestment Effects of the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements"