Mixed Race Studies

One Drop of Love

Hollywood Fringe Festival
L.A.’s Largest Celebration of the Performing Arts
2013-06-13 through 2013-06-30

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Produced by: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

Performances:

Friday 2013-06-21, 14:30 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Friday 2013-06-28, 16:15 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Sunday 2013-06-30, 18:00 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo show that journeys from the U.S. to East & West Africa and from 1790 to the present as a culturally Mixed woman explores the influence of the “one -drop rule” on her family and society. All proceeds from the Sunday, June 30th show will go to MASC – Multiracial Americans of Southern California – in celebration of Loving Day.

For more information, click here.

More Talk Radio on 06/17/13 [with Professor Greg Carter]

More Talk Radio
KBOO Community Radio
Portland, Oregon
2013-06-17, 15:00-16:00Z, 08:00-09:00 PDT (Local Time)

The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing

Hosts Celeste Carey and Cecil Prescod interview Greg Carter about his new book “The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing.”

Barack Obama’s historic presidency has re-inserted mixed race into the national conversation. While the troubled and pejorative history of racial amalgamation throughout U.S. history is a familiar story, Greg Carter asks us to reconsider an understudied optimist tradition, one which has praised mixture as a means to create a new people, bring equality to all, and fulfill an American destiny. He re-envisions racial mixture as a vehicle for pride and a way for citizens to examine mixed America as a better America.

Greg Carter is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

In “The United States of the United Races: A Utopian History of Racial Mixing” Greg Carter explores a broad range of documents and moments, unearthing a new narrative that locates hope in racial mixture.

Download the episode here.

Santita Jackson Show (WVON AM, Chicago) with Rainier Spencer

The Santita Jackson Show
WVON 1690 AM
Chicago, Illinois
2011-02-16, 15:05Z (09:05 CST, 10:05 EST, 07:05 PST)

Santita Jackson, Host

Rainier Spencer, Director and Professor of Afro-American Studies; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The topic of discussion will be the so-called “one-drop rule.”  Listen to the interview here (39.6MB, 00:43:21).

Dr. Spencer is the author of the new book, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix (2011) in where 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.

Selected bibliography:

• “Racism and the Multiracial Label,” commentary in the “Room for Debate: The ‘Two or More Races’ Dilemma” section, The New York Times, February 12, 2011.
• “Mixed-Race Chic,” The Chronicle Review, May 19, 2009.
• Challenging Multiracial ldentity. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006.
• Spurious Issues: Race and Multiracial Identity Politics in the United States, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999.

Listen to the interview here (39.6MB, 00:43:21).

Panel Discussion: “Mixed Race Asian American Art and Identity”

DePaul University Art Museum
935 W. Fullerton
Chicago, Illinois 60614
Phone: 773-325-7506
Wednesday, 2013-05-29, 18:00 CDT (Local Time)

War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art

Debra Yepa-Pappan, “Live Long and Prosper (Spock was a Half-Breed),” digital print.

Laura Kina, Vincent DePaul Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

Camilla Fojas, Vincent DePaul Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies
DePaul University

Debra Yepa-Pappan, Jemez Pueblo and Korean Artist
Chicago, Illinois

This event is cosponsored by the Japanese American Service Committee, DePaul’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity President’s Diversity Series, and Latin American and Latino Studies.

For more information, click here.  Watch the video of the presentation here.

US Census: Rationalizing Race in US History

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Brooklyn Historical Society, Othmer Library
Brooklyn, New York
2013-04-18, 19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)
View the full video of the event here.

What boxes do you mark on the U.S. Census to describe your heritage?

Prior to the year 2000, multiracial people could only check one box in the Race category of the U.S. Census. Now, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group.

Speakers

• Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch in the Population Division
• Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University, author of The Nature of Race and “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century”
• Josh Begley, creator of Racebox.org, an online archive of U.S. Census forms from 1790 to the present
• Jonathan Soma, creator of A Handsome Atlas, a new digital way to explore US Statistical Atlases of the 19th Century

Moderated by Eric Hamako, doctoral candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

This event is part of Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an oral history project and public programming series, which examines the history and experiences of mixed-heritage people and families, cultural hybridity, race, ethnicity, and identity.

View the full video of the event here. View photographs from the event here.

Afrofuturism’s Others

Tate Modern
Starr Auditorium
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Saturday, 2013-06-15, 14:00-16:00 BST (Local Time)

Ellen Gallagher, Deluxe 2004–5 (detail) Mixed media, 60 frames, 38.9 x 32 cm each
Tate Photography © Tate

Ellen Gallagher’s work deconstructs received truths and weaves together propositional narratives, inhabiting spaces where the future collapses into the past, obsolescence into technology and image into text. These are spaces carved out by the cultural aesthetic of Afrofuturism.

In the context of Gallagher’s work, speakers will explore and complicate readings of Afrofuturism and its influence on contemporary artists’ practices, creating an intricate understanding of the genre and its evolutions. Speakers include Zoe Whitley (Independent Curator and panel co-organiser), Hazel V. Carby (Professor of African American Studies and Director of the Initiative on Race Gender and Globalisation at Yale University), Amna Malik (Lecturer in Art History and Theory at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL), and Lili Reynaud-Dewar…

This event is related to the exhibition Ellen Gallagher: AxME

For more information, click here.

The Joys and Challenges of Becoming a Transracial Family Through Adoption

Your Adoption Coach with Kelly Ellison
2013-04-20

Kelly Ellison, Host

If you are considering adopting a child of a different culture or race than your family, or you are already a transracial family formed through adoption, don’t miss this show. Our host this week is Amanda Grant, President of USAdopt, and an adoptive mother in a transracial family, who is joined by guest Tiffany Rae Reid, expert in a racial identity development and host of Mixed Race Radio. Contemplating the adoption of any child takes courage and honesty. The adoption of a child of a different cultural or racial heritage adds another layer of both complexity and celebrations. Learn the realities of transracial adoption, how to prepare your family for the change in its composition, what to do to support the healthy development of your child’s identity and what resources are available to support your child and your family in every aspect of living as a transracial family.

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

Yokohama Yankee: My Family’s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan [Presentation]

German Institute for Japanese Studies (Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien)
Jochi Kioizaka Bldg. 2F
7-1 Kioicho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0094, Japan
Wednesday, 2013-06-12, 18:30 JST (Local Time)

Leslie Helm, Seattle Business Magazine

The DIJ Social Science Study Group is a forum for young scholars and Ph.D. candidates in the Social Sciences. Presentations on a scholar’s research project are about 45 minutes, followed by about 45 minutes of Q&A. The DIJ Social Science Study Group usually meets once a month, on a Wednesday from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Leslie Helm’s decision to adopt Japanese children launches him on a personal journey through his family’s 140 years in Japan, beginning with his German great-grandfather, who worked as a military adviser in 1870, married a Japanese woman and started a stevedoring and forwarding business in Yokohama. The family operates a successful business across two world wars by having sons take German, Japanese and U.S. citizenship, and transferring management among the sons as Japan shifts its alliances from the U.S. and Britain to Germany and Italy. While the business survives, the family suffers from its mixed-race identity and the inability to ever truly establish a sense of belonging in Japan. The book draws a contrast between the Helm family, and the family of Leslie’s mother, Barbara Schinzinger, whose father, Robert Schinzinger, taught German in Japan for sixty years but always maintained a strong identity as a German national with a duty to teach the Japanese about “the true Germany.”

In this presentation I am presenting my recently published book on this topic. My family history and our story of a multinational, biracial merchant family serves as historical document, shedding light on the political, economic, cultural, and racial interactions and tensions between Japan and the United States for more than a century and a half, right up to the present day.

For more information, click here. View the program here.

News Release: Lectures in Edenton and Raleigh this weekend

Chowan Discovery Group
2013-05-15

Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director

This weekend, the Winton Triangle’s history will be presented at special events in Edenton and Raleigh.  On the morning of Friday, May 17, the town of Edenton is observing its 300th anniversary. Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group, is one of two speakers lecturing on Edenton area history.
 
The next day, Saturday, May 18, Jones recounts the Winton Triangle role in the Civil War.  The venue is the United States Colored Troop Symposium at the North Carolina History Museum in Raleigh.  Jones will be speaking at 2:30pm.
 
The Winton Triangle is the 260 year-old landowning community of color that traverses the triangle formed by Winton, Ahoskie and Cofield.  In the past year, the Chowan Discovery Group (http://www.chowandiscovery.org/) has made presentations in New York City, Chicago, Greensboro, Durham and Washington, D.C. 

Among the venues were the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at DePaul University where Jones hosted two panels about Roanoke-Chowan and Appalachian mixed race peoples.  Other occasions were three Winton Triangle presentations at the African American Genealogical and Historical Society Conference in Greensboro.  Since the April 2012 erection and dedication of the Robert L. Vann Marker in Ahoskie, Marvin Jones has given three radio interviews about Vann and the Winton Triangle.  Internet links to these interviews are found on the Chowan Discovery website (“Presentations”).

For more information about the upcoming lectures, contact the Chowan Discovery Group at 202.726.4066 or info@chowandiscovery.org.

Mixing Matters: Critical Intersectionalities: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium on Critical Mixed Race Studies

Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS)
University of Leeds
2013-05-18, 08:45-17:15 BST (Local Time)

Key note speakers:

Dr. Suki Ali is a Senior Lecturer at the London School of Economics. Her research interests include feminist cultural studies, theories of identity and embodiment and particularly the interplay between gender, ‘race’ and class. Dr. Ali is the author of several books, articles and chapters including ‘Mixed-Race: Post-Race: Gender, New ethnicities and cultural practices’ and ‘Reading Racialised Bodies: Learning to see Difference’.

Dr. Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain is a Senior Lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her research interests are in people of mixed descent; emotions, technology and globalization; race/ethnicity; critical race theory; beauty; and Japanese Americans. She has published in Ethnicities, Sociology Compass, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Amerasia Journal. Her book Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants (University of Minnesota Press) examines the use of blood quantum rules in Japanese American Beauty Pageants. She is currently researching and writing about ‘Global Mixed Race’ and ‘The Globalization of Love’.

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a rapidly growing body of scholarship and through the continued challenging of essentialized conceptions of ‘race’ and ethnicity, CMRS becomes an emerging paradigm for examining the politics of ‘race’, racism and representation. CMRS can be defined as “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” (Critical Mixed Race Studies Association). In this transnational, interdisciplinary symposium, we seek to explore these components through the lens of intersectionalities in individual experience, theorising and activism.

For more information, click here. View the program here.