Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race Week by SHADES of CSU

Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado
2012-04-02 through 2012-04-06

Monday, Apr. 2, marks the beginning of the 4th-annual Mixed Race Week, a series of presentations and activities celebrating the multiracial and interracial community at Colorado State University.
 
This annaul event is sponsored by Shades of CSU, an organization dedicated to multiracial students…one of a few of its kind in the country.

For more information, click here.

Postracial Possibilities? Deconstructing Contemporary Discourse on Multiraciality

American College Personnel Association
ACPA 2012 Annual Convention
Louisville, Kentucky
2012-03-24 through 2012-03-28

Session Information:
Monday, 2012-03-26
16:15-17:15 EDT (Local Time)
Kentucky International Convention Center, 107

Marc Johnston
University of California, Los Angeles

Prema Chaudhari
Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF)

Although multiracial individuals have been positioned as harbingers of a postracial era (especially after President Obama’s election) others critique the multiracial movement, with its large college student base, for reinforcing racial hierarchies (Spencer, 2011). This contradictory discourse, coupled with increasing suspicion of mixed heritage students doing “the race hustle” when seeking college admission/scholarships, presents challenges for addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse multiracial student population. By deconstructing this discourse we offer clarity and recommendations for future practice.

For more information, click here.

Japanese-Canadian Identity Issues: One Big Hapa Family Screening with Jeff Chiba Stearns

University of Toronto, St. George
Hart House
2012-03-21, 18:30-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

According to recent statistics, the rate of mixed marriages among Japanese-Canadians is at 70% with intermarriage at 95%. Why? Jeff Chiba Stearns attempts to address this phenomena and more with his award-winning documentary, One Big Hapa Family. The combination live-action/animated film is a joint presentation between Hart House’s Conscious Activism Doc series and the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival. Screening and artist talk followed by Q&A with introductory remarks by Aram Collier, Reel Asian Film Festival Programming Director. Wed., March 21 at 6:30 pm in the Music Room at Hart House, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto (St. George Campus). FREE.

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an award-winning Canadian independent filmmaker, writer and illustrator whose work incorporates animation, documentary, and experimental filmmaking. Stearns founded his Kelowna, BC-based company Meditating Bunny Inc. in 2001. He frequently addresses the issues of mixed race identity in his films, and has published articles and spoken around the world on issues of cultural awareness, Hapa and the animation process.

Hart House is a living laboratory of social, artistic, cultural and recreational experiences where all voices, rhythms and traditions converge. As the vibrant home for the education of the mind, body and spirit envisioned by its founders, Hart House encourages and supports activities that provide spaces for awakening the capacity for self-knowledge and self-expression.

For more information, click here.

Not Tainted by the Past: Re-conceptualization and Politics of Coloured Identities among University Coloured Student Activists in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Achieving Sustainable Development in Africa
International Conference at the University of Pittsburgh
2012-03-29 through 2012-03-30

Sardana Nikolaeva
School of Education
University of Pittsburgh

The colonial apartheid South Africa, its hierarchical racial classification and its consequences have garnered a lot of interest from scholars in a number of disciplines. Coloured identities, previously shaped as a single racialized categorical identity of a diverse group of “mixed race” people by the particular racist discourse of colonial and apartheid South Africa, currently needs to be re-conceptualized as heterogeneous and constructed by complex networks of relations and practices in specific historical, social, and political contexts. This research project examines how coloured students’ identities are formulated, contested and negotiated within a specific student activism context in a post-apartheid higher education terrain. In this sense, involvement in student activities of undergraduate and graduate students, who self-identify as of coloured identities, is interpreted as a productive resource and a site of identity articulation, contestation, and negotiation, evolving around locally embedded social, economic, cultural, and political issues. I firmly believe that there is a need of research of post-apartheid youth identity politics, particularly among coloured youth, one of the most disenfranchised, discriminated, and socio-politically-, economically-, and culturally-marginalized groups in South Africa. On a broader level, the research findings might shed light on the specifics of the minority group politics (coloured/colouredness politics) within post-1994 South Africa as a multi-racial and multi-ethnic state.

For more information, click here.

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies

University of California, Berkeley
Friday, 2012-03-16 through Saturday, 2012-03-17

Co-Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and Ethnic Studies Department.

In traditional Ethnic Studies, mixed race scholarship has often been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out. In order to allow for a collaborative environment given the need for more critical scholarship on the experiences of mixed race people, in Fall 2009, a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley formed the inter-disciplinary working group at the Center for Race & Gender, Transnational Mixed Asians In-Between Spaces (TMABS). The goal of the working group is to to create a safe space for scholars to discuss issues of mixed race identity and also to provide a venue for those doing work in this area to present developing ideas and projects. Furthermore, the working group seeks to expand the notion of mixed race to include other factors such as culture and space. Overall, it is our intent to encourage and promote research on mixed race/culture in Ethnic Studies and bring together scholarship from multiple disciplines to collaborate on future research areas.

In Spring 2012, we will host our inaugural conference entitled, “Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies.” The conference will take place March 16-17th at the UC Berkeley campus and will include panels, film screenings, poetry performances and an art exhibit.

The co-founders of TMABS are: Kevin Escudero, Joina Hsiao, Ariko Ikehara and Julie Thi Underhill, doctoral students in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.

For more information, click here.

Obama & The Biracial Factor Book Release & Roundtable Discussion

Richard Oakes Multicultu​ral Center-SF State Student Center
1650 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, California
2012-04-05, 16:00-18:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join book contributors, Dr. Robert Collins, Dr. Wei Ming Dariotis, Dr. Grace Yoo, Dr. Andrew Jolivétte and Cesar Chavez Research Institute Director, Dr. Belinda Reyes in a lively conversation about the 2012 Presidential election campaign and the new book, Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority.

Books will be available at the event.

hafu (half Japanese)

Lakeland Lectures
Lakeland College
5-7-12 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 1st Floor
2012-03-07, 19:00 JST (Local Time)

Marcia Yumi Lise, Researcher and Co-Founder
The Hafu Project

Lakeland College is pleased to present our ongoing lecture series, free of charge, for scholars, students and members of the public to discuss contemporary issues. You are cordially invited to our next lecture.

This lecture asks the very question of what it is to be a Hafu in Japan from a sociological perspective. We will explore the complex nature of the Hafu experiences, which are often a result of the racially designated society surrounding us, as well as the various individual factors ranging from physical appearance, upbringing, or education. Ultimately, it seeks to characterise the negotiation and self-definition of ethnic/racial territory & identity in relation to the cultural and racial discourse in Japan.

Marcia was born in Kanagawa, Japan to a Japanese mother and an Italian-American father. She moved to London in 2001 where she studied Sociology and completed an MA in Social Research at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2008. She is now based in Tokyo and is the thematic advisor of the Hafu Film.

For more information, click here.

The Octoroon

The Georgetown Theatre Company
North, South, Race & Class: A Staged Reading Series of 19th century Plays at Grace Church
1041 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, 2012-02-29, 19:30 EST (Local Time)

The Octoroon (by Dion Boucicault) was one of the biggest hits of mid-19th century American theatre. It is the story of a beautiful mixed-race girl raised as white; when her father dies in debt, she is sold as property. Like the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Octoroon sensationalized the peril of a young slave woman at the hands of an evil white man. The play also serves as an apology for aristocratic slave-owners by presenting them as kindly and broad-minded, while the lower-class white characters were depicted as vicious, lecherous immigrants. These stereotypes persisted is Southern literature until well into the 20th century.

Mixing It Up: Supporting Multiracial Students in Racial Affinity Groups

American College Personnel Association
ACPA 2012 Annual Convention
Louisville, Kentucky
2012-03-24 through 2012-03-28

Session Information:
Wednesday, 2012-03-28
08:30-09:30 EDT (Local Time)
Kentucky International Convention Center, 212 & 213

Heather C. Lou, FYE Coordinator
University of Vermont

Adam J. Ortiz, House Director
Hampshire College

Rachel Luna
University of the Pacific

Racial affinity groups in higher education have significant potential to advance positive identity development for people of all races. The dynamic between dominant and non-dominant social identities calls for individuals to be divided into binary racial affinity groups of White and People of Color (POC). Frustration, anxiety, and feelings of marginality can arise when multiracial people are asked to choose between groups. In this presentation, will discuss tactics to best support multiracial students through affinity group facilitation.

For more information, click here.

Littefield Lecture: The Free State of Jones: Community, Race, and Kinship in Civil War Mississippi

Littlefield Lecture
University of Texas, Austin
Applied Computational Engineering & Sciences Building (ACE), Avaya Auditorium 2.302
2012-03-06, 16:00-18:00 CST (Local Time)

Victoria Bynum, Professor Emerita
Texas State University, San Marcos

Dr. Bynum will be delivering this year’s Littlefield Lectures for the History Department of the University of Texas, Austin.  The lectures are based on research from my last two books, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War and The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies.