Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race in the Age of Obama

University of Chicago
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC)
International House, Home Room
1414 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL
2010-03-05, 09:00 to 18:00 CST (Local Time)

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of  Chicago presents a daylong conference, “Mixed-Race in the Age of Obama,” which seeks to intervene in the discursive, material, and ideological debates involving mixed-race people nationally and internationally, examining historical, sociological, literary, legal, and other (inter)disciplinary representations of the lived experience of mixed race people. Organized by Dr. Matthews Briones, Department of History at U of C. Co-sponsored by International House Global Voices Program. Free & open to the public.

For more information, click here.

Representing gods in a mixed-race society: Images, rituals and politics in María Lionza’s cult (Venezuela)

University of St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom
Centre for Amerindian, Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CAS)
Social Anthropology Seminar Room (Room 50, St Salvator’s Building)
2010-03-17, 15:00Z to 17:00Z

Roger Canals
University of Barcelona

Roger Canals, University of Barcelona, will speak on ‘Representing gods in a mixed-race society. Images, rituals and politics in María Lionza‘s cult (Venezuela)’.

TALK: India and Gaugin’s Tahitian Nudes: Mapping Modernism In A Global Frame

Interdisciplinary Humanities Center
University of California, Santa Barbara
3041 HSSB
2010-02-17 16:00 PST (Local Time)

Saloni Mathur, Associate Professor of Art History
University of California, Los Angeles

This presentation will revisit the legacy of Amrita Sher-Gil, the part-Indian/part-Hungarian painter who stands at the cosmopolitan helm of modern Indian art, by focusing on a single under-examined painting that she produced in 1934. The painting, provocatively titled “Self-Portrait as Tahitian,” depicts the artist’s own nude body in the romantic space of Gauguin’s Tahitian nudes. The talk will examine how Sher-Gil’s mixed race heritage, her insider/outsider status, and her sense of both distance and belonging in relation to India became a powerful driver of her short but influential artistic career.  Saloni Mathur is Associate Professor of Art History at UCLA and author of India by Design: Colonial History and Cultural Display (2007).

Sponsored by the IHC’s South Asian Religions and Cultures RFG.

An Evening with Kip Fulbeck-artist, slam poet, filmmaker Event Type: Lecture

Sacramento State University
University Union Ballroom
2010-02-18, 19:00-21:00 PST (Local Time)
Contact:  (916) 278-6997 

An Evening With Kip Fulbeck, artist, slam poet, and filmmaker- addressing issues on identity, multiraciality, and pop culture through spoken word, stand-up comedy, political activism, and personal stories, University Union Ballroom, 7 pm, FREE!!!
 
Sacramento State’s ASI, Multi-Cultural Center, and the University Union UNIQUE Programs are honored to bring an exciting and unique performance, “Race, Sex, and Tattoos: the Kip Fulbeck Experience” by Kip Fulbeck at the University Union Ballroom on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 7:00pm.  A book signing will follow the performance.

Kip Fulbeck is an artist, writer, slam poet, professor and award-winning director/filmmaker of Chinese, English and Welsh decent. Using his own experiences of being from a mixed heritage, Kip speaks nationwide, tackling topics such as media imagery, interracial dating patterns and icons of race and sex. His performance, which includes a mixture of spoken word, stand-up comedy, political activism and personal stories inspire audiences to explore how our own ethnic stereotypes and opinions on cultural identity are formed.

Fulbeck’s photographic book, Part Asian, 100% Hapa, features portraits of mixed heritage participants along with their hand written responses of how they self-identify ethnically, responding to the frequently asked question of, “What are you?” “Hapa,” derived from the Hawaiian word for “half,” used to be considered a derogatory word. Today, however, it has been embraced as a term of pride by mixed-race individuals and groups who identify with Asian or Pacific Rim ancestry.  Over 1,200 people nationally have participated in The Hapa Project by Kip Fulbeck.

A Professor and Chair of Art and an affiliate faculty of Asian American Studies and Film Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Kip Fulbeck has performed and exhibited in over 20 countries and throughout the U.S., including the Museum of Modern Art, the Singapore International Film Festival, the World Wide Video Festival, PBS, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial. He has twice keynoted the National Conference On Race in Higher Education, directed 13 independent videos including Banana Split and Lilo & Me, and authored the critically acclaimed books Permanence: Tattoo Portraits; Part Asian, 100% Hapa which features portraits of people of mixed heritage; Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography; and Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids. He has also been featured on CNN, MTV and PBS.

All ages permitted. No alcohol provided or sold at venue.

Interrogating Identities: Exploring Racism, Community and Belonging Among Mixed Race Youth in Canada

Centre for Culture, Identity and Education
University of British Columbia
2008-04-02
Video Length: 00:27:20

Leanne Taylor
York University

Youth Research Symposium – Video-stream. (April 2, 2008). These video streams feature speakers from the Day-Long Youth Research Symposium and showcase the role of interdisciplinary research in rethinking conceptualizations of ‘marginalized’ youth identity’, debates on youth subcultures versus post-subcultures, issues of gender, sexuality and social exclusion, and the history of policing and surveillance of young bodies over time and across national spaces.

Download the video here. [Warning: Due to extremely large file size (257 MB) right-click the link and download the video to your computer.]

Geek Out: Mixed Race in America

University of Californa, Berkeley
Lawrence Hall of Science
2010-02-10, 19:00 to 22:00 PST (Local Time)

Geek Discourse
Tour the “Race: Are We So Different?” exhibit and participate in a discussion facilitated by Dr. Victoria Robinson of the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies and American Cultures programs on what it means to be mixed race in America. Authors of the book “Blended Nation” Mike Tauber and Pamela Singh will present several photographs and stories from the book…

For more information click here.

‘Multiracial Identity’ documentary film and discussion

Portland State University
228 Smith Union
Wednesday, 2010-03-03, from 18:30-21:00 PST (Local Time)

This new documentary explores the social and political impact of adding a Multiracial Category (the fastest growing demographic in America) as a stand-alone racial group on the US Census. Different racial and cultural groups see multiracialism differently. For some Whites, multiracialism represents the pollution of the White race. For some Blacks it represents an attempt to escape Blackness. And for some Asians, Latinos and Arabs, multiracialism represents the dilution of the culture. Preview this 88-minute film, followed by refreshments and join the discussion with filmmaker Brian Chinhema, Sarah Ross, Director, HONEY (Honoring our New Ethnic Youth) Inc., Thomas Wright, Director, Oregon Council on Multiracial Affairs, and Dana Stone, Adjunct Faculty, University of Oregon Couples & Family Therapy.

Sponsored by Multicultural Center, the Presidents Commission on the Status of Women, and the Center for Academic Excellence. For more information, contact Patrice Hudson, Co-Chair, Presidents Commission on the Status of Women at (503)725-8327 or pjhudson@pdx.edu.

Prejudice inspires filmmaker to discover Afro-German roots

Indiana Daily Student
Indiana University
2010-01-24

Abby Liebenthal, Staff Reporter

“It all started with a public threat on my life.”

Within the first few minutes of Mo Asumang’s documentary “Roots Germania,” students, faculty and Bloomington residents became part of a search for the director’s identity…

…Asumang said the journey to find her identity was driven by a desire to understand where racism toward Afro-Germans originated.

“It’s like a job to search for identity,” Asumang said. “It starts when you’re born in Germany – it’s not so easy to be part of that country.”

The film was triggered by a song, written by a Neo-Nazi band the “White Aryan Rebels,” that calls for Asumang’s murder. Lyrics in the song include “This bullet is for you, Mo Asumang.”…

Read the entire article here.

Mapping Identity – Opening Lecture by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Haverford University
KINSC Sharpless Auditorium
2010-03-19 16:00 EDT (Local Time)

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy
Princeton University

Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery presents Mapping Identity, curated by Carol Solomon, Visiting Associate Professor, and Janet Yoon, HC ’10. The show will run Friday, March 19 – Friday, April 30, 2010, with an opening reception Friday, March 19, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Gallery.

Opening Lecture – Kwame Anthony Appiah
Called a post-modern Socrates, Kwame Anthony Appiah asks profound questions about identity and ethics in a world where the sands of race, ethnicity, religion and nationalism continue to realign and reform before our eyes. His seminal book Cosmopolitanism is a moral manifesto for a world where identity has become a weapon and where difference has become a cause of pain and suffering. In intellectually stimulating language, Appiah challenges you to look beyond the boundaries — real and imagined — that divide us, and to see our common humanity…

For more information, click here.

Life on the Color Line: Exploring the Struggle to Conceptualize and Measure Racial Identity in the Mixed-Raced Population

Race & Ethnic Studies Institute
Texas A&M University
2010-01-29
14:30-16:00 CST (Local Time) 
ACAD 326

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Illinois at Chicago

Empirical research on the growing multiracial population in the U.S. has focused largely on documenting new forms of racial identification, analyzing psychological adjustment, and understanding the broader political consequences of mixed-race identification. Efforts toward conceptualizing multiracial identity, however, have been largely disconnected from empirical data, mired in disciplinary debates, and bound by historically specific assumptions about race and racial group membership. This talk will provide a critical overview of multiracial identity theories, examine the links between theory and research, explores the challenges in conceptualizing multiracial identity, and propose considerations for future directions in measuring the racial identity of the mixed-race population. Kerry Ann Rockquemore’s scholarship focuses on racial identity development among multiracial individuals, interracial family dynamics, and the politics of racial categorization. She is the author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (2001, 2007), Raising Biracial Children (2005), and over two-dozen articles and book chapters on multiracial youth. Her research has been featured in numerous media outlets such as the New York Times and ABC’s 20/20. In addition to her research, Dr. Rockquemore provides mentoring workshops for faculty of color at colleges across the U.S. She facilitates the popular online discussion forums at www.BlackAcademic.com, and is co-author of The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul (2008).