Mixed Race Studies

The Color Conversation-Healthy Identity Happy Kids: Fostering Positive Racial Identity in Mixed Youth

Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
World City Center
3911 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90018
Saturday, 2015-06-20, 13:00-16:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join our 3rd parenting seminar where we focus on issues relating to adolescence – specifically, racial identity.

Hear a presentation on how parents can better understand the racial identity process in youth and what you can do to support your youth! Join a supportive conversation in a safe space with similar parents and families.

Bring your mixed race or transracially adopted TEEN for a special breakout session JUST for them!

FREE childcare will be provided at the preschool playground and garden for younger children.

Children will engage in an identity building and affirming art project presented by Art Zone!

This event will be beneficial for ALL parents, not just those with teens!…

For more information, click here.

#471: Mixed Race in a Box: Teaching Mixed Race in the 21st Century

The 28th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
2015-05-26 through 2015-05-30

Friday, 2015-05-29, 15:30-17:30 EDT (Local Time)

In Fall 2013, The Asian American Literary Review published Mixed Race in a Box, a multimedia project equal parts art piece, anthology, and innovative educational tool. It has since been adopted as a course text for teaching race and mixed race in over 80 college and university classrooms in 6 countries—the U.S., Ireland, Argentina, Hong Kong, Poland, and Germany.

Popular consciousness of “multiracialism” is at an all-time high, and with it, student (and faculty) needs for reflecting personally and academically on mixed identities and the histories and realities of mixed race. But what exactly does it mean to teach mixed race? What are we teaching, and how, and why? Where—in what disciplines? And who are we teaching—what understandings of race and mixed race are our students, across the U.S. and beyond, bringing into the classroom?

This proposed session will outline Mixed Race in a Box as a pedagogical experiment, opening to a larger discussion of teaching mixed race and race more generally. It will explore how we can best equip students and teachers to think critically about race while, as the saying goes, “meeting them where they are.” Produced by an editorial team of University of Maryland students, featuring collaborative projects by leading artists, scholars, poets, and writers, the Box includes a range of unusual materials—a foldout map of mixed Native poetics, a deck of playing cards, three pocket books, photo slideshows and video art—and offers a wealth of different approaches to teaching race and mixed race. The session will examine some of these particular strategies and discuss the challenges and successes of employing them in various classrooms, with varying student constituencies, across the country. Prospective presenters will include a senior editor of the Box, a student editor of the Box, and two scholar-writers who contributed pieces to the Box and taught it in their respective classrooms.

Presenters

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota

Zohra Saed
Hunter College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, New York

Lawrence-Minh Davis, Director
Asian American Literary Review, College Park, Maryland

Andrew Mayton
University of Maryland, College Park

#312: Mixed Foundations: Supporting and Empowering Multiracial Student Organizations

The 28th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
2015-05-26 through 2015-05-30

Thursday, 2015-05-28, 08:30-10:00

Multiracial college students face pervasive monoracist attitudes and structural oppression. These students, like many students from historically marginalized backgrounds, experience greater satisfaction and retention rates when their identities are understood and their needs accommodated. This session will focus on supporting and empowering multiracial students and mixed race student organizations on college campuses. Presenters will utilize student affairs research and identity development theory to address common challenges that multiracial organizations face and how to effectively confront them. Participants will learn about the importance of creating inclusive spaces for multiracial students, equipping them with strong leadership skills, and advising them through political and administrative hurdles.

Presenters

Victoria Malaney, Special Assistant to the Dean of Students
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Kendra Danowski, Program Coordinator for Civic Engagement & Social Justice
Eugene Language College, New York, New York

#262: Researching and Publishing on Multiracial Topics

The 28th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
2015-05-26 through 2015-05-30

Wednesday, 2015-05-27, 15:30-17:30 EDT (Local Time)
Columbia 3, Terrace Level

From the politics of labeling and counting mixed race students in research, to the interactions with editors who might not care about multiraciality, this session explores key issues related to researching and publishing on multiracial topics. Join several panelists from various fields in and outside of academia, as they share their experiences with various aspects of the research and publishing enterprise. From developing their own ideas for projects and conducting research, to writing for peer-reviewed journals and even turning the dissertation into a book, the panelists have a wealth of knowledge and expertise related to researching and publishing. They will share lessons learned along the way in their various roles as researchers, authors, editors, and most importantly, readers that can help others move their own work forward. Moreover, this session allows for the discussion of not only the general challenges of the research and publishing process, but also what happens when you add the complexities of multiraciality. Depending on contexts, multiracial topics can at times be viewed as too controversial or unworthy of our scholarly attention. Without conducting innovative research and disseminating new knowledge, there will continue to be limited/limiting discourses on mixed race, setting up dangers of a “single story” to encompass all experiences of such a diverse population. Publishing can be used as a way to open up new lines of inquiry, challenge narrow framings, and insist upon anti-racist approaches to research and practice. It also allows us to use various approaches to reach multiple audiences (e.g., scholarly, popular, student, literary). By exposing some of these issues, participants will have the opportunity to engage in critical conversations and move toward developing their own best practices for researching and publishing on multiraciality.

Presenters

Marc Johnston, Assistant Professor
Ohio State University

Kristen Renn, Professor of Higher, Adult, & Lifelong Education
Michigan State University

Lawrence-Minh Davis, Director
The Asian American Literary Review, Inc., College Park, Maryland

Steven Riley, Founder/Creator
MixedRaceStudies.org, Silver Spring, Maryland

#119: Moving “Multiracial” from the Margins: Theoretical and Practical Innovations for Serving Mixed Race Students

The 28th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
2015-05-26 through 2015-05-30

Part I: Tuesday, 08:30-11:30 EDT (Local Time)
Part II: Tuesday, 13:00-17:30 EDT (Local Time)

Despite evidence from the 2010 U.S. Census that multiracial youth are the fastest growing demographic in the nation, multiraciality continues to be on the margins of the discourse on race and racism in higher education theory and practice. This two-part institute invites educators from all backgrounds and expertise levels to engage in deep learning about the complexities of serving multiracially-identified students. After briefly reviewing contemporary models of multiracial identity and development, presenters will focus on better understanding the contexts shaping and complicating such models. Further, the institute will focus on theoretical innovations that help to move of understanding of multiraciality forward, including systems of oppression and models for assessing the campus climate for multiracial students. The latter part of the institute will focus on applying theories to practice and working through hands-on issues related to serving multiracial students. Throughout the institute, contradictions in the popular discourse about multiraciality and recent controversies will be presented for participants to engage in critical thinking about their own potential biases (i.e., self-work) as well as how to educate others toward creating more inclusive contexts for multiracial students. Additionally, a range of activities, including presentations, journaling, and small- and large-group discussions, will be used to allow participants to actively engage throughout the institute.

Pre-Conference Institute

This institute will:

• Contextualize current approaches to supporting the healthy identity development of multiracial people;
• Explicitly connect the discourse on multiracial identity to monoracism, a system of oppression related to traditional racism that marginalizes those who do not adhere to society’s promotion of discrete monoracial categories (Johnston and Nadal, 2010);
• Include multiraciality in larger efforts aimed at obtaining racial equality in higher education; and
• Provide ample opportunities for in-depth discussions of the complexities of serving multiracial students to assist participants in evaluating and growing their own institution’s service to multiracial students.

Presenters

Marc Johnston, Assistant Professor
Department of Educational Studies
Ohio State University

Eric Hamako, Assistant Professor
Department Equity & Social Justice Program
Shoreline Community College, Shoreline, Washington

Natasha Chapman, Assistant Professor
West Virginia University

Victoria Malaney, Special Assistant to the Dean of Students
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Mixed Race in Australia and the region

University of Western Australia (UWA)
2015-06-08 through 2015-06-10

Conveners: Farida Fozdar

People of ‘mixed race’ are often seen as marginal individuals managing cultural and psychological tensions, or alternatively valorised as the vanguard of an integrated, post-racial, cosmopolitan world (Edwards et al. 2012). Such dichotomies ignore the complex lived reality of being mixed – ranging from ‘passing’, to constructing multiracial identities, to embracing a cultural identity not necessarily reflected in one’s appearance (see Perkins, 2007; Paradies, 2006; Song and Aspinall, 2012; Jones, 2011). Mixed identities are not singular and fixed, but multiple and fluid (Nandi & Platt 2012; Tilbury, 2007; Paradies, 2006), often characterised by ‘ordinariness’ (Caballero, 2012). The lived experience of being ‘mixed’ is strongly influenced by political and social context (Luke and Luke, 1999). While a growing body of research exists on ‘mixed race’, more productive approaches are needed to investigate the cultural production of ‘mixedness’.

Perhaps surprisingly, Australia and the region lag behind the rest of the world in research on ‘mixed race’. There has been little public debate about the place of ‘mixed race’ in Australia and New Zealand (see Fozdar and Perkins, 2014). The subject does rate a hearing in Australia, however, in regard to people of mixed Aboriginal descent (Andrew Bolt style) (see Paradies, 2006). The social and political contexts of mixed race in Australia, New Zealand and the region offer complex histories of colonisation and migration, making this region an important counterpoint to the large bodies of research undertaken in the UK and US.

We invite papers on mixed race in Australia and surrounding countries, with a particular focus on mixed race across the life course (Csizmadia, 2012), the health and development of young people and families; cross-country comparison, and transgenerational effects. We are keen to include papers on mixed race of all types.

Invited speakers include:

• Prof Rosalind Edwards (Southampton)
• Dr Chamion Caballero (LSE)
• Prof Yin Paradies (Deakin)
• Prof David Trigger (UQ)
• Dr Kirsten McGavin (UQ)

View the program guide here.

Negotiating Mixed Ethnicity/Heritage Relationships Seminar

Coventry University
Centre for Communities & Social Justice
Room 152, Jaguar Building
Coventry, United Kingdom
Wednesday, 2015-06-24, 09:45-15:15 BST (Local Time)

Historically, debates about ‘mixed race’ families have centred on Black/White relations concerning issues of identity, belonging and racism affecting the partner and their children. Though these issues have not gone away, we are also seeing an emergence of new configurations and challenges of family diversity involving inter-faith, inter-caste and inter-ethnic relationships.

This workshop seeks to provide a forum to debate and share experiences. Anyone interested from an academic, personal or professional perspective in these emerging forms of family and social diversity are welcome to participate.

Keynote Speakers

• Dr Omar Khan – Director Runnymede; Member of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, UK representative on the European Commission’s Socio-economic network of experts.
• Audrey Allas – PhD Student, University of Durham; research interests are in interfaith relations, particularly between Abrahamic traditions, intermarriages involving British Pakistani Muslim communities.

For more information, click here.

Fast Talking PI: A Reading by Selina Tusitala Marsh

Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU
8 Washington Mews
New York, New York 10003
Monday, 2015-04-27, 16:00-18:00 EDT (Local Time)

Auckland-based poet and scholar Selina Tusitala Marsh reads from her award-winning collection, Fast Talking PI. NYU Performance Studies Graduate student and Indigeneous artist, facilitator, and organizer si dåko’ta alcantara-camacho introduces Dr. Marsh and guides the post-reading conversation.

Fast Talking PI and Dark Sparring: Poems, both by Selina Tusitala Marsh, will be available for purchase at a special 20% off discount following the program, courtesy of the NYU Bookstore.

For more information and to RSVP, click here.

One Drop of Love at New York University

New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts
566 LaGuardia Place
New York, New York 10012
Friday, 2015-04-17, 20:00 EDT (Local Time)

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo show written and performed by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. It asks audiences to consider: how does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships? The show travels near and far, in the past and present, to explore family, race, love and pain – and a path towards reconciliation. Audiences will go on a journey from the 1700s to the present, to cities all over the U.S, and to West and East Africa, where both the narrator and her father spent time in search of their racial roots.

Produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni.

One Drop of Love is the closing program for NYU Ally Week.

For more information click here. To purchase tickets, click here.

One Drop of Love is coming to Massachusetts and New York in April

One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval
2015-04-07

Photo by Jeff Lorch

“What Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni brings to the table is a moving and insightful microscope to our belief that there is such a thing as race and how the assignment of identity plays out in destructive ways that impact each and every one of us. This is a critical component that often gets missed in our attempts to dismantle this social construct.” —Carol Ross, Media and Climate Communications Specialist for Amherst, Massachusetts.

For more information, click here.