Bench Ansfield
LightNews LightNews
banner
benchansfield.bsky.social
Bench Ansfield
@benchansfield.bsky.social
1.1K followers 760 following 170 posts
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
Posts Replies Media Videos
benchansfield.bsky.social
In disbelief. The NYT named Born in Flames one of 100 Notable Books of 2025
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."
November 25, 2025 at 4:55 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
New Haven & CT folks: Elizabeth Hinton & I will be talking about BORN IN FLAMES at Possible Futures Books on 11/7. Plz come out!
@elizabethkai.bsky.social
October 27, 2025 at 3:02 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Found the future of the field in my mailbox. Huge congrats @danielle-wiggins.bsky.social @m-r-glass.bsky.social @randolphjustin.bsky.social ! ! !
October 23, 2025 at 9:51 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Tomorrow at 2:30 after #NoKings!
October 17, 2025 at 8:42 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
TONIGHT!!
October 16, 2025 at 4:16 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Join @ceaweaver.bsky.social, Sarah Seidman, and me for a wide-ranging discussion about the fight for housing justice from the '70s to today. This Saturday @museumofcityny.bsky.social 2:30.

Come thru right after the #nokings protest!

DISCOUNT CODE: Students can use code BX10 for 50% off their order
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.
October 15, 2025 at 3:49 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
NYC come thru!! I'll be doing two BORN IN FLAMES launch events next week 10/16 and 10/18. Plz spread the word!

(links to follow)
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
October 8, 2025 at 8:36 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
After the Palisades & Eaton fires, insurers leaned on a program designed to respond to the '60s uprisings. The climate crisis is being hedged with the same faulty tools created for the urban crisis. I wrote about that inheritance for @zocalopublicsquare.bsky.social and @sfchronicle.com
Screenshot of the SF Chronicle with the headline "How the Watts Uprising in LA led to the state's FAIR insurance plan"
October 3, 2025 at 2:36 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
NYC launch of BORN IN FLAMES! Housing Justice for All and I will be in conversation at the Museum of the City of NY on Sat 10/18. Join HJ4A's Ritti Singh, the museum's curator of social activism Sarah Seidman, and me as we discuss the fight for housing justice from the 70s to the present.
October 1, 2025 at 2:22 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
How can the housing struggles of the 1970s guide the tenant movement in the present? @city.bsky.social breaks it down in this electrifying review of BORN IN FLAMES for @newrepublic.com

If you want to better understand why cities chose police funding over habitability, read this.
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.
September 23, 2025 at 2:09 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Photo captured just before Sal drooled all over the book review of Born in Flames in the Sunday NYT
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. A beautiful black and brown dog looks at the newspaper featuring the BORN IN FLAMES review.
September 14, 2025 at 3:56 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Curious how the Abundance movement holds up to historical analysis? Leave it to @charlotteerosen.bsky.social to break it down.

"Born in Flames makes for a refreshing, historically grounded retort to a recent wave of anti-regulatory rhetoric...the 'Abundance' movement."
Two book covers are arrayed as if in a matchup. Bench Ansfield's Born in Flames vs. Klein and Thompson's Abundance.
September 8, 2025 at 2:10 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
BORN IN FLAMES is a NYT Editors' Choice title
Screenshot of the NYT website featuring Born in Flames by Bench Ansfield and Black Moses by Caleb Gayle
September 5, 2025 at 2:23 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Congrats @alybatt.bsky.social proud to share a pub day with your opus
August 20, 2025 at 4:02 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Exhilarating for BORN IN FLAMES to receive a feature review in the pages of the @newyorker.com. Immerwahr and I come to different conclusions about racial capitalism and the burning years, but I hope our debate will be fruitful for others. -->
Screenshot of New Yorker article titled "Did Racial Capitalism Set the Bronx on Fire?" by Daniel Immerwahr
August 18, 2025 at 6:18 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Getting "greedy landlords" printed in the NY Post is surreal. Never thought I'd be in the tabloids.
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"
August 17, 2025 at 2:46 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Philly-specific zine on responding to ICE raids
Printout of zine: "How to Report ICE and Help Keep Our Neighbors Safe”
August 15, 2025 at 12:44 AM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Less than one week until the publication of BORN IN FLAMES! It makes a huge difference if you *preorder* before 8/19! Get the book from any outlet and my press will send you these 4 beautiful stickers once you fill out the form copied below.
August 13, 2025 at 4:54 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
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
July 30, 2025 at 3:43 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
PHILLY!
Join Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and me for the launch of BORN IN FLAMES!

8/21 at Uncle Bobbie's, 7pm

Tickets here: eventbrite.com/e/uncle-bobb...

@keeanga.bsky.social
Flyer for book launch event featuring author Bench Ansfield and interlocutor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
July 30, 2025 at 3:38 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
The BORN IN FLAMES stickers are here and they’re beautiful! Made in collaboration with my dear friend, Jenna Peters-Golden, + an original by Mary Tremonte
@justseeds.bsky.social, these will be sent to you free if you order BORN IN FLAMES by Aug 19th and submit here: tinyurl.com/4nx7rcv8
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”
July 27, 2025 at 7:34 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Excited to announce a sticker giveaway for BORN IN FLAMES. Preorder by 8/19, fill out this form, and receive 4 beautiful stickers for free!!

Art made in collaboration with Jenna Peters-Golden + a Mary Tremonte original @justseeds.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/4nx7rcv8
July 24, 2025 at 5:28 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
First book, first garden! Just got my author copies of BORN IN FLAMES, out from @wwnorton.com on August 19th.
I am sitting in front of flower garden holding a copy of my new book, BORN IN FLAMES.
July 8, 2025 at 9:27 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
THIS THURSDAY! Come out for the Philly premier of UNION followed by a panel discussion with organizers from Amazonians United, Amazon Labor Union, and the Philly Whole Foods Union, moderated by PA State Senator Nikil Saval @pasenatorsaval.com

filmadelphia.org/movies/union/
April 8, 2025 at 1:53 PM
benchansfield.bsky.social
Speaking on a panel with the excellent @erinmcel.bsky.social and @katewagner.bsky.social this Friday at UPenn. Philly come thru!
Register here: lnkd.in/e2VhjeJm
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.
February 26, 2025 at 10:02 PM