Mixed Race Studies

Second Biennial: Interdisciplinary Conference on Race – Examining Race in the 21st Century

2010-11-11 through 2010-11-13
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey

The idea of race continues to be controversial. In spite of different historical developments in various parts of the world, the meaning of race and its significance remains an open issue.

Some of the questions this conference will address are:

• Why do the issues that surround race continue to be important?
• Is race a useful construct?

How are systems of racial classification and identity manifested in social institutions and relationships?
We seek individual papers, panels, workshops, and posters that can include but are not restricted to the following topics:

• Race and identity in different cultures
• Race, gender, ethnicity, color, and class
• Race in the Obama era
• Race and diversity in higher education
• The concept of post-racialism in history and society
• Race and popular culture
• Race and urbanization
• Race change[s]: Racial formation, then and now
• Race and identity in local and global perspective
• Race, continuity, and change
• Implications of racial discourse
• Race and ethnicity: similarities and differences
• Race and power

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 2010-08-30.

For more information, click here.

Ethics of Racial Identity

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
108th Annual Conference
2010-11-13 through 2010-11-14
Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii

Presiding Officer: Adebe DeRango-Adem, York University

Barack Obama benefited from the spirit of tolerance that defined Hawaii’s racial climate. This special session envisions a mixed-race literature in the age of Obama that forwards not solely theorizations of what mixed race identities are, but an ethics for treating mixed race identification in literature. It is designed to re-situate mixedness/interraciality within the field of literary inquiry as a question of the ethical treatment of racialized figures.

‘Celtic Samurai’ Tells Story of Hapa Family Life

Hokubei.com – North America’s Japanese Newsource
2010-06-18

“Celtic Samurai,” a storytelling program by Dr. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu on the family life of a Japanese mother and American-born Irish father, will be presented by the Japanese American National Library and the Nichi Bei Weekly on Saturday, June 19, [2010] at 1:30 p.m. in the Union Bank Hospitality Room, located in the Japan Center’s East Mall, Post and Buchanan streets in San Francisco.

The subtitle, “A Boy’s Transcultural Journey Searching for Shamrocks in Zen Gardens,” expresses the playful nature of the stories that illuminate how political, legal and ideological forces influence the lives of families and individual identities

Read the entire article here.

3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival

2010-06-12 through 2010-06-13
Japanese American National Museum
69 East 1st Street
Los Angeles, California

The 3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival will take place at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 East 1st Street, June 12-13, 2010, in downtown Los Angeles.

In the Obama age, this free public event celebrates storytelling of the Mixed racial and cultural experience including that of transracial/cultural adoption and interracial/cultural relationships.

The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit organization, brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for two days of workshops, readings, film screenings and live performance including music, comedy and spoken word.

Today, 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to the Census. More than 6.8 million individuals identify as Mixed.

The Festival highlights include:

• The largest West Coast Loving Day party, a nationwide celebration of the Supreme Court decision which affirmed the right of people of different races to marry
• Family fun
• Mixed Unplugged: Comedy, Music, Performance and Spoken Word, a live performance
• Loving Prize Presentation honoring celebrated storytellers and community leaders

AM Northwest KATU-TV Live Interview with Heidi W. Durrow

AM Northwest
KATU-TV (Portland, Oregon)
Friday, 2010-05-21 09:00-10:00 PDT (Local time), (12:00-1300 EDT, 16:00-17:00Z)

Heidi Durrow appeared on the program AM Norwthwest on KATU-TV (Portland, Oregon) to discuss her new book, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.

You may view the recorded segment below by pressing the start button or by clicking here.

Jackie Kay – Red Dust Road Launch Night

Glasgow Women’s Library
81 Parnie Street, Glasgow, Scotland
Wednesday 2010-06-23, 19:00 BST

Red Dust Road Exclusive Launch

Jackie Kay is known and loved for her fiction – a novel, and short stories -, for her poetry and her plays. In this revelatory and redemptive book, with characteristic generosity and humour, she tells the most inspirational of stories: her own…

For more information, click here.

Borders Book Festival: Where Words Come Alive—Jackie Kay

Harmony Marquee
Melrose, Scotland
2010-06-20, 20:30 BST (Local Time)

Published only days before the festival, Red Dust Road is Jackie Kay’s autobiographical journey.  Adopted by warm-spirited Scottish communists, Jackie has never thought of anyone else as her ‘real’ parents, but meeting her birth father and mother was nevertheless revelatory. This is a wonderfully written, emotional book about biology and destiny, strangers and family, belonging and belief.

For more information, click here.

Hollins University Commencement

2010-05-22 through 2010-05-23
Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia

Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a graduate of Hollins University’s master of arts program in English and creative writing, will be the guest speaker at Hollins’ 168th Commencement Exercises, which will be held on Sunday, May 23, 2010, at 10 a.m. on the university’s historic Front Quadrangle.

Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, Mississippi, studied at Hollins in 1990 and 1991 and is now professor of English and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University at Atlanta. She received the Pulitzer for her most recent collection of poetry, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), which blends her reflections on growing up as the daughter of a biracial couple in the Deep South with largely forgotten Southern history dating back to the Civil War…

For more information, click here.

Multiracial Identity [Movie], World Premiere Screening

Politics on Film 2010 Festival
Saturday, 2010-05-08, 13:30 EDT (Local Time)
E Street Cinema (Purchase tickets on-line here.)
555 11th Street, NW
Washington, DC

Year: 2010
Director: Brian Chinhema
Writer: Brian Chinhema
Producer: Brian Chinhema (Abacus Production)
Running Time: 01:22:00

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no officially political recognition for mixed-race people. Multiracial Identity examines what it means to be multiracial in America and explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movement.

The film is produced and directed by Brian Chinhema and features commentary from noted scholars, Rainier Spencer, Naomi Zack, Aliya Saperstein, Aaron Gullickson, Susan J. Hayflick and Pastor Randall Sanford. 

For more information, click here.  Purchase tickets on-line here.

Professor Nikki Khanna to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #151 – Professor Nikki Khanna
When: Wednesday, 2010-05-05 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Dr. Khanna’s primary areas of specialization include race/ethnic relations and social psychology. Her current research draws from both areas and she is particularly interested in studying biracial and multiracial identity. She studies how people racially identify and how identity is shaped and negotiated through social interactions with others in their day-to-day lives.

Most Recent Publications:

• “’If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black’: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule”. Sociological Quarterly. Volume 51, Number 1 (Winter 2010).
• “Country Clubs and Hip-Hop Thugs: Examining the Role of Social Class and Culture in Shaping Racial Identity.” In Kathleen Korgen‘s (Ed.). Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity. Routledge.

Download the podcast here.