AALR Mixed Race Initiative

AALR Mixed Race Initiative

The Asian American Literary Review
2012-08-26

Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, co-Editor-in-Chief

Thanks to political organizing, scholarship, and the arts, not to mention media coverage, mixed race has become hyper-visible.  So what’s next?  The Asian American Literary Review (AALR) Mixed Race Initiative, launching this Fall 2012 and running until Spring 2014, won’t simply be a reexamination of race or a survey of mixed voices, important as both are.  We envision our role as that of provocateur—inspiring new conversations and cross-pollinations, pushing into new corners.

The initiative will feature a special issue on mixed race to debut in Fall 2013, all of the contributions for which will be collaborative, “mixed” in nature, bringing together folks across racial and ethnic boundaries, across scholarly disciplines, artistic genres, countries, languages, and generations.  What are the nerve centers of mixed race?  How does mixed race mark fault lines the world over?  We invite you to tell us.  Call-for-papers in early-mid September 2012.

The second phase of the initiative will be an international, multi-institution synchronous teaching program to run in Fall 2013 and Spring 2014.  You agree to teach our special issue as a course text (for anywhere from a week to a month during the allotted time period) and we plug you into a vast network of scholars and students across the world, in classrooms ranging from indigenous studies to cultural psychology, from Latin American Studies to literary studies, from art history to race theory.  We’ll supply a shared online curriculum and coordinate various cross-classroom exchanges, with the goal of staging a real, livetime, region to region and country to country conversation about race and mixed race.  So far classrooms at 40 colleges and universities in five countries have signed on, and we hope yours will join in too.  Let’s work together to make a new model for virtual, transnational education and build new social, civic, and intellectual communities.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, click here.  If you’d like to participate in the teaching program, assist as a volunteer coordinator, or donate in support of the project, please contact us at editors@aalrmag.org.

AALR is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit.

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