Mixed Race Studies

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
DePaul University Student Center
2250 N. Sheffield
Chicago, Illinois USA 60614
2010-11-05 through 2010-11-06

Sponsored by DePaul University Asian American Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies and co-sponsored by the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and the MAVIN Foundation.

“Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies,” the first annual Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be held at DePaul University in Chicago on November 5-6, 2010.

The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have reached a watershed moment, the 2010 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies.”

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

View a draft (as of 2010-09-01) schedule here.  A final schedule should be ready by 2010-09-15.

Organizers:

Wei Ming Dariotis, Assistant Professor Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University, IPride Board
1600 Holloway Ave
San Francisco, CA 94132
dariotis@sfsu.edu
415-913-8306

Camilla Fojas, Associate Professor and Chair
Latin American and Latino Studies
DePaul University
SAC 5th floor 2320 North Kenmore Avenue
Chicago, IL 60614
cfojas@depaul.edu
773-325-4994

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University
1150 W. Fullerton #317
Chicago, IL 60614
lkinaaro@depaul.edu
773-325-4048

Representing Mixed Race in Jamaica and England from the Abolition Era to the Present

Routledge: Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures
Publication Date: 2010-10-15
247 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-39808-4

Sarah Salih, Associate Professor of English
University of Toronto

This study considers cultural representations of “brown” people in Jamaica and England alongside the determinations of race by statute from the Abolition era onwards. Through close readings of contemporary fictions and “histories,” Salih probes the extent to which colonial ideologies may have been underpinned by what might be called subject-constituting statutes, along with the potential for force and violence which necessarily undergird the law. The author explores the role legal and non-legal discourse plays in disciplining the brown body in pre- and post-Abolition colonial contexts, as well as how are other bodies and identities – e.g. black, white are discursively disciplined. Salih examines whether or not it’s possible to say that non-legal texts such as prose fictions are engaged in this kind of discursive disciplining, and more broadly, looks at what contemporary formulations of “mixed” identity owe to these legal or non-legal discursive formations. This study demonstrates the striking connections between historical and contemporary discourses of race and brownness and argues for a shift in the ways we think about, represent and discuss “mixed race” people.

Table of Contents

1: Introduction: The Mulatto in Law and Literature
2: Pre-Emancipation Stories of Race: Marly and The Woman of Colour
3: Legitimacy, Illegitimacy and Citizenship in the Nineteenth Century: Dinah Craik’s Olive [1850] and Richard Hill’s Lights and Shadows
4: Mulattos in the Contact Zone: Mary Seacole and Ozias Midwinter Coda: Modern Mulattos: Mona Lisa and The Crying Game
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix

Lynne Rienner Publishers
October 2010
325 Pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-58826-751-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58826-776-4

Rainier Spencer, Professor and Director, Afro-American Studies Program
Department of Anthropology & Ethnic Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Is postraciality just around the corner? How realistic are the often-heard pronouncements that mixed-race identity is leading the United States to its postracial future? In his provocative analysis, Rainier Spencer illuminates the assumptions that multiracial ideology in fact shares with concepts of both white supremacy and antiblackness.

Spencer links the mulatto past with the mulatto present in order to plumb the contours of the nation’s mulatto future. He argues cogently, and forcefully, that the deconstruction of race promised by the American Multiracial Identity Movement will remain an illusion of wishful thinking unless we truly address the racist baggage that serves tenaciously to conserve the present racial order.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• THE MULATTO PAST
  • The Mixed-Race Background
  • Of Tragic Mulattoes and Marginal Men
  • Mulatto Writers on Marginality
  • Imitations of Life
  • Rejecting a Shared Past
• THE MULATTO PRESENT
  • Postraciality, Multiraciality, and Antiblackness
  • Resurrecting Old Myths of Mulatto Marginality
  • The False Promise of Racial Bridging
  • Assessing the New Millennium Marginal Man
• THE MULATTO FUTURE
  • Whither Multiracial Militancy? Conserving the Racial Order
  • Mulatto (and White) Writers on Deconstructing Race
  • Beyond Generation Mix

Take One Candle, Light a Room: A Novel

Pantheon Books an Imprint of Random House
2010-10-12
336 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-307-37914-6 (0-307-37914-0)

Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
University of California, Riverside

>

Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her southern California home most of the time. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her close friend Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette’s twenty-one-year-old son, Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor— Fantine’s godson—has fled to Louisiana. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor, determined to help him avoid the criminal future that he suddenly seems destined for.
 
But Fantine’s own fate will be altered on this journey as well: her father will reveal the wrenching secrets of his past, and she will be compelled to question the most essential choices she’s made in her life. And all three characters will come face-to-face with the issues of race that beset them: Fantine, whose light black skin has eased her way in the world; her father, who grew up in the Jim Crow South; and Victor, whose fall into violence mirrors the path of so many other black men his age.
 
Take One Candle, Light a Room is a powerfully moving story about the intricacies of human connection, and about the ways in which we find a place for ourselves within our families and the world.

Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, 2nd Edition

Routledge
2011-01-01
248 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-31183-0

Robert J. C. Young, Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature
New York University

As one of the most important books in post-colonial studies, this book argues that contemporary theories on post-colonialism and ethnicity are disturbingly close to the colonial discourse of the nineteenth century.

Rather than marking ourselves off from patterns of thought which characterized Victorian racial theory, we show remarkable complicity with historical ways of viewing ‘the other’, both sexually and racially. ‘Englishness’, Young suggests, has been less fixed and stable than uncertain, fissured with difference and a desire for otherness.

In this updated new edition, the author revisits the ideas set out in the book in light of recent developments in post-colonial theory, including projects influenced by his own work. With this fresh intervention, Robert Young is set once again to re-energize his field and open new channels of debate.

The social care system and mixed race young people: placing the individual child at the heart of decision making

People in Harmony
Central London, England
2010-11-11

A one-day conference from People in Harmony which will consider why mixed race young people are over-represented in the care system, how they fare in the system and beyond, and how existing procedures could be improved upon.

About the Conference

The emergence of a sizeable mixed race population provides us with the opportunity to look again at racial stereotyping, and at how public services engage with individuals who do not slot into a single racial group. The need for this is perhaps most acute in the area of looked after children and wider social care – the focus of this conference.

Mixed race young people are over-represented in the care system, which has important implications for their long term prospects. A number of reasons may contribute to explaining this over-representation – social class, cultural differences in attitudes to marriage and long term relationships, widely dispersed family and a consequent lack of informal support structures. However, the tendency of service providers to see ‘black’ children as separate from their white mothers and to question the ability of white mothers to raise ‘black’ children may also play a part.

There have been major disagreements about local authority policies which insist on the right ‘racial match’ between child and adoptive family (based on Children Act 1989 Section 22 (5) (c)). Much evidence suggests that the key to successful placements is not a good racial match, but the young person’s wishes and the warmth of the adoptive family.

This conference will seek to explore these difficult issues with openness and honesty, drawing on research and academic work, and on personal experience. It will provide delegates with an opportunity to consider:

• Whether too much time is spent finding the right label (is it dual heritage rather than mixed race, and does it really matter?).
• Why ‘racial matching’ between young people and adoptive families may have been over-emphasised at the expense of adopted children – has cultural competence simply become a new dogma?
• The direct experience of mixed race young people who have been in the care system.
• Why social class and social heritage means that outcomes are very different among mixed race young people.
• Whether there is sufficient support for parents, especially single parents, of mixed race children – and how this is informed by perception of white mothers with ‘black’ children.
• How the care system – including wider services like education and CAMHS – can work towards better outcomes?

Organisations which book places at this event are invited to take up free exhibition space to encourage an exchange of information and resources.

Certificates of attendance will be available.

For more information, click here.

Mixed Race/Mixed Space in Media Culture & Militarized Zones

Thursday Afternoon Forum Series
University of California, Berkeley
691 Barrows Hall
2010-10-07, 16:00 to 17:30 PDT (Local Time)

A Critical Race Theory Approach to Understanding Cinematic Representations of the Mixed Race Experience
Kevin Escudero, Ethnic Studies

This presentation focuses on the developmental trajectory of the portrayal of mixed race people in mainstream media.  Primarily looking at film, but also analyzing other media texts such as photography, stand-up comedy and particular sub-genres of film (Disney, television series, etc.) this presentation seeks to understand the ways in which different forms of media have portrayed mixed race people pre and post-Loving.  While much work has been done on the depiction of mixed race people in media post-Loving, there is a need for such work to be contextualized within the pre-Loving depictions of mixed race.  Furthermore, very little attention has been given to the ways in which pre-1967 depictions of mixed race characters (e.g. the tragic mulatto) oftentimes reflect as well as perpetuated racist stereotypes of mixed race people.  These depictions of mixed race people during the anti-miscegenation era are what I argue, has given rise to the utilization by mixed race people of multiple forms of self-expression available through various media in the post-Loving era. 

Using a framework of “neutralizing the Other” in combination with a Critical Race Theory analysis I will also examine the ways in which post-1967 depictions of mixed race people in media have resulted in a neutralizing of the pre-1967 “threat” of miscegenation and the resulting mixed race offspring of these marriages.  Using pre-1967 depictions as a backdrop for post-Loving discourse, this paper also comments as to the self-perception and self-representation of mixed race youth today in film.  In this analysis, other forms of marginalization and subordination are prevalent, specifically gender.  Not to be overlooked in mixed race and miscegenation discourse, women of color are more often than not depicted as hypersexualized, super-fertile beings while mixed race men depending on their racial mixture are depicted as either hyper-masculine beings (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Deisel) or associated with a more effeminate masculinity (e.g. Keanu Reeves who is half Asian and half Caucassian).  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, and the media portrayal of his marriage scandal at the end of 2009, has been cast as the ultimate playboy among men.

Historical Development and Expression of Black-Okinawa: Mixed-Socio-Cultural Race/Space in Militarized Zone
Ariko Ikehara, Ethnic Studies

This paper examines the historicity of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War era and the narrativity of its aftermath in which the legacy and memories of the U.S.-Asia border (militarized Asia space) are apprehended, narrated and remembered from a transpacific gaze: mixed-space/race zone in the U.S. militarized Asia.   Thus, this project seeks to map out a genealogy of mixed-space/race in the U.S. militarized Asia zone in the historical context of the Cold War and Post-Cold War era.  Re-examining the “natural” phases of social-geographical expansion/spatial development brought on by the militarization of Asia during the Cold war and Post-Cold war era in Asia, my main focus is couched in the base cultural space (mixed-space) in Okinawa.  Some of the research questions are: what is the structure that maintains and fuels the military complex in Asia, what forms did the militarized place become mixed-space, and what are the different circumstances in which the mixed-race people (Amerasians) with or without mixed families traverse and move in and out and around (circulation) of the militarized Asia zone.  Centering the black-Amerasian history and narrativity as the loci of inquiry, I am particularly interested in exploring how the notion of “blackness” is apprehended, circulated, and performed in the mixed-space/race, and is reiterated over and again within the larger spatiality of transnational sites in between US and Asia.

For more information, click here.

Forsaking All Others: A True Story of Interracial Sex and Revenge in the 1880s South

University of Tennessee Press
2010-11-10
160 estimated pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-57233-724-4; 1572337249
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-57233-740-4; 1-57233-740-0

Charles F. Robinson, Vice Provost for Diversity; Associate Professor of History and Director of African American Studies
University of Arkansas

The electronic book (E-Book) is available now.

An intensely dramatic true story, Forsaking All Others recounts the fascinating case of an interracial couple who attempted—in defiance of society’s laws and conventions—to formalize their relationship in the post-Reconstruction South. It was an affair with tragic consequences, one that entangled the protagonists in a miscegenation trial and, ultimately, a desperate act of revenge.

From the mid-1870s to the early 1880s, Isaac Bankston was the proud sheriff of Desha County, Arkansas, a man so prominent and popular that he won five consecutive terms in office. Although he was married with two children, around 1881 he entered into a relationship with Missouri Bradford, an African American woman who bore his child. Some two years later, Missouri and Isaac absconded to Memphis, hoping to begin a new life there together. Although Tennessee lawmakers had made miscegenation a felony, Isaac’s dark complexion enabled the couple to apply successfully for a marriage license and take their vows. Word of the marriage quickly spread, however, and Missouri and Isaac were charged with unlawful cohabitation. An attorney from Desha County, James Coates, came to Memphis to act as special prosecutor in the case. Events then took a surprising turn as Isaac chose to deny his white heritage in order to escape conviction. Despite this victory in court, however, Isaac had been publicly disgraced, and his sense of honor propelled him into a violent confrontation with Coates, the man he considered most responsible for his downfall.

Charles F. Robinson uses Missouri and Isaac’s story to examine key aspects of post-Reconstruction society, from the rise of miscegenation laws and the particular burdens they placed on anyone who chose to circumvent them, to the southern codes of honor that governed both social and individual behavior, especially among white men. But most of all, the book offers a compelling personal narrative with important implications for our supposedly more tolerant times.

American novelist & memoirist Danzy Senna to speak at University of Richmond English Department 2010-2011 Writers’ Series

University of Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Brown-Alley Room, Weinstein Hall
Wednesday, 2011-03-16 19:00 EST (Local Time)

Danzy Senna is the author of two novels and a memoir that focus on issues of race, gender and cultural identity. Her debut novel, “Caucasia,” the story of two biracial sisters growing up in racially charged Boston during the 1970s, became an instant national bestseller. It won the Book-of-the-Month Club Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and an Alex Award from the American Library Association, was named Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Of mixed-race heritage, Senna writes extensively on the experience of being mistaken for white. Her latest work is a collection of short stories.

For more information, click here.

Werner Sollors to speak at University of Richmond English Department 2010-2011 Writers’ Series

University of Richmond
Westhampton Living Room, Westhampton Center
Richmond, Virginia
2010-09-30 16:30 EDT (Local Time)

Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Afro American Studies; Director of the History of American Civilization Program
Harvard University

Werner Sollors is the Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His major publications include “Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Literature and Culture;” “Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature;” and a book-length contribution on “Ethnic Modernism” in Sacvan Bercovitch’s “Cambridge History of American Literature.” With Greil Marcus he wrote “Ethnic Modernism and A New Literary History of America.”

Sollors is the recipient of a 1981 Guggenheim Fellowship and the Constance Rourke award for the best essay in American Quarterly in 1990. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and of the Bayerische Amerika-Akademie. His talk is entitled “The Rise of Ethnic Modernism in the US, 1910-1950.”

For more information, click here.