Updates

Explosivity: Following What Remains, photographs by Andrea Gaffney, University of Minnesota Press, 2025.

Coverage:

• • Book launch at Shaping San Francisco, archived talk & video.
  • “after explosivity?”  (YouTube), Columbia University GSAPP Lectures in Planning Studies (virtual, due to FAA shutdown).
  • “Imperial Mobilities, Geographical Imaginaries: A Conversation Between Javier Arbona-Homar and Emily Mitchell-Eaton,” The Abusable Past, October 28, 2025.
  • New Books Network interview with Dr. Miranda Melcher.
  • Environment and Planning D: Society and Space book forum; my response.

Coming up & ongoing:

UC Davis Humanities Institute Collaborative Research Fellowship for Monumental Disappearance with Rafael Capó-García (Memoria (De)colonial, Puerto Rico). | Episodio de Sur-Urbano: Descolonización del patrimonio (en español).

“Smells like San Francisco: Vapors and Volatility in the City of Explosivity,” a detour co-organized w/ Professor Adam Levy, Ohlone College and the Smell and Destroy (SAD) Collective.

Explosivity seminar, convened by Susan Zieger for the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP) Conference, October 15-17, Madison WI.

Chapter for Demilitarization in Theory and Practice: An International Workshop, Fall 2026., convened by Crystal Mun-hye Baik and Anjali Nath, with the University of Michigan Press for a forthcoming collection.

“Particulate Matters” forum contribution, convened by Desiree Valadares for Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

Also published…

(with Julie Sze) “Watefront/battlefront: Vallejo’s Black landscapes of resistance against police and environmental violence”. I give a short encapsulation of this chapter for the Routledge Architecture, Urban Space & Politics channel: here. | Podcast interview w/ Vallejo Sun.

Plus, I wrote a small feature on UC Davis memorials in the brand new first issue of the San Francisco Review of Whatever.

Communication

✉︎ Email: jarbona [at] ucdavis [dot] edu *available for video or voice calls by appointment. I have Signal. Se habla español. 

Advising

American Studies undergraduate majors: Please reach out if you’d like to schedule an appointment or contact me first with a preliminary draft of your emphasis plan.

Office hours

Summer 2026. Contact me for requests.

I’m usually available for video or in-person appointments (by request). Public or media inquiries, collaboration opportunities, or grad/post-grad research interest: please kindly email me (see above). I can also provide an encrypted Signal link. Thank you!

Pronouns & Pronunciation

he/him/his

My name is in Spanish. It’s pronounced with an audible ‘R’ at the end: Javier. I use Arbona or Arbona-Homar (the H is completely silent and pronounced “Omar” with emphasis on the last syllable, like this: omár). I don’t have a middle name. Arbona is my paternal last name, therefore I’m not “Javier Homar” nor “Professor Homar.” Professor Arbona is fine with me.