Mixed Race Studies

LLS-4910-850: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

University of Nebraska, Ohama
Fall 2011

Olga Celle, Visiting Professor of Sociology

This course is a semester long discussion on Mestizaje or racial/ethnic mixing in Latin America. The premise informing the discussion is that race and ethnicity are social constructions—There are no actual races or ethnicities in the world. And yet, people and institutions function as they were real, which make them powerful weapons for oppression, social injury and rebellion. Most Latin Americans define themselves or are defined as Mestizo or mixed blood people. At times, they mean culturally mixed, meaning not totally Western or Indigenous. Other times, they are referring to their attributed racial make up. For this reason, national statistics should be taken with caution because the labeling of citizens is usually done by a census taker who might impose his views unto the individual in order to classify her/him. But the point remains, why does the state needs to classify its citizens according to race and ethnicity? Why do we need to define ourselves and others (sometimes beloved ones) according to race and ethnicity?

Race and ethnicity are powerful coordinates in the network of domination, for both the oppressors and the victims’ contestation in the circuits through which power flows. Race and ethnicity are experienced in a different fashion depending on the individual’s gender and sexuality. Hence this course incorporates gender and sexuality into the discussion.

The questions informing our journey through these complex issues are: How did Latin Americans construct and interpret racial, ethnic and gender identities and ideologies? And how these interpretations and ideologies have been used to formulate an idea of nation? In other words, we will learn about the different ways ethnicity and race have been defined in the Latin America studies (historiography) and the ideologies and practices associated with these categories. Our readings will be drawn mostly from all Latin American countries…

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English 108: Crossing Racial Boundaries in Post-Civil Rights Fiction and Film: Interracial Encounters

University of California, Los Angeles
Winter 2012

Caroline Streeter, Associate Professor of English

This course looks at literature and film depicting interracial sexuality and mixed race identities in the post-Civil Rights era. Course materials depict individuals and communities that trouble and challenge conventional ideas about racial categorization and the boundaries between groups. Texts represent a wide variety of ethnic and cultural perspectives. Books include Caucasia (Danzy Senna), A Feather on the Breath of God (Sigrid Nunez), Drown (Junot Diaz) and My Year of Meats (Ruth L. Ozeki). Movies include Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix), Jungle Fever (Spike Lee) and The Wedding Banquet (Winston Chao).

ROMST 200.01: Critical Approaches to Mestizaje

Duke University
Spring 2012

Claudia Milian, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Romance Studies; African & African American Studies

This seminar will examine critical theories of mestizaje, miscegenation, mixed race, and hybridity as articulated in Latino, Latin American, and African-American projects of racial identification and classification. In particular, the course aims to study the theories, rhetoric, and assumptions of racial and cultural inclusion, while analyzing frameworks that propose mestizaje, hybridity, or “mixedness” as oppositional and transgressive concepts that highlight an emancipatory potential. The seminar will investigate the following questions: What does it mean to have hybridity as the foundation of an identity that is most often associated with Latinas and Latinos? In effect, who are the “mestizos?” In what ways does a mestiza consciousness speak to twenty-first century articulations of the increased prominence of mixed race in the United States? What possibilities can mestizaje offer through its multiple locations of cultures and races in both countering purist constructions of racial ideologies and in building alliances with other “contact zones” of mixtures that remain to be discursively mapped in the critical language of mestizaje? The course will draw from wide ranging theoretical, literary, and historical approaches to notions of mixture as a mode of inquiry that charts new identities, social practices, and knowledge production.

ASAM 187. Asian Pacific American Mixed Race Issues

Pomona College, Claremont, California
Spring 2008

Course will explore the lives of racially and ethnically mixed people, focusing on Asian Pacific Americans. As intermarriage rates increase for all groups, the experiences of multiracial people reflect in distinctive ways the cultural and identity choices that individuals and communities are facing. The course will concentrate on the significance of both ascribed and chosen racial identities, examining how they influence the experiences and choices of individuals, families, and communities. A second area of attention will be to how multicultural backgrounds shape relationships and practices within families. Other issues to be discussed include living in multiracial communities, public policy implications, transracial adoptees, self‐representation in literature and memoirs, and media representations. Students will have the opportunity to investigate a topic of their choice in a research paper.

FYS 102N: Exploring Mixed Identities

University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Fall 2011

The aim of this course is to move beyond prevalent monoracial discourses by examining identities and experiences from a mixed race/mixed ethnicity perspective. This course explores many topics such as the history of racialization, processes of othering, acceptance and the politics of claiming, the role of education in racial formation (and vice versa), interracial dating, white and non-white mixed identities, transnational and transracial adoptions, and hybridity. This course will be interactive and discussion based.

LATC-GA 2145 – Semester in Latin America: Brazilian Racial Democracy

New York University
Spring 2012

Sarah Sarzynski, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Racial democracy, or the myth of racial democracy, has been a dominant national narrative in Brazil throughout the twentieth century. Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves (1933) is often associated as the first articulation of “racial democracy.” Freyre argues that the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery allowed for a racial democracy—that is, a society not based on racial divisions—to emerge through miscegenation. From the start, the national narrative of racial democracy drew comparisons between the Brazilian “racial paradise” and the segregated United States. The well-developed historiography on Brazilian racial democracy refutes Freyre’s arguments about the benevolent nature of Brazilian slavery and demonstrates how the narrative of racial democracy masks discrimination and racial inequality in Brazil. Yet, ideas attached to racial democracy have a remarkable persistence in Brazil even today, hindering the implementation of affirmative action policies and the recognition of indigenous peoples as national citizens.

The first part of this course focuses on contextualizing the development of racial democracy as a Brazilian national narrative. We examine the dominant racial ideologies and practices that preceded the idea of Brazil as a racial democracy during the Old Republic (1889-1930). Then, we turn to evaluating Freyre’s seminal work The Masters and the Slaves and how it turned into a political project of the Vargas Era (1930-45). We also analyze the challenges to racial democracy during this period by reading about black social movements and intellectuals, and resistance to national indigenous policies. Course readings include theoretical texts on democracy to position various meanings of racial democracy. The second part of the course traces developments and challenges to Brazilian racial democracy from 1945-1985. Themes include how racial democracy intersects with gender/ sexuality, modernization policies, groups excluded from the national mixed-race type, authoritarian rule, and mass culture/popular culture. The final section of the course shifts to contemporary issues of affirmative action and other racially based policies and resistance in popular culture. We focus on the persistence of notions attached to racial democracy and question how the national narrative has changed over time.

The course draws from interdisciplinary texts and sources including scholarly analyses in literary criticism, history and anthropology; archival documents such as Brazilian and US newspapers; film and popular culture; and, novels. Portuguese is not required.

Mix Up, Mix Up: Reviewing Bob Marley as the Militant Mulatto

University of Miami
Fall 2011
ENG 106 R4/S4

Rachel Panton, Lecturer of English

In lieu of what would have been Bob Marley’s 66th birthday, we will explore the impact of Rastafari on the life and music of Marley, and on other contemporary Roots Reggae artists. We will also discuss the history of Marley’s mixed-race heritage and the ways in which race influenced his music and being. Students will be encouraged to investigate these issues, as well as develop their own inquiries about this mystical legend.

HIS 3015: Intermarraige in the U.S.: Race, Sex and Power in a Multicultural Society

Castleson State College, Vermont
Fall 2011, Fall 2014

An overview of the historical evolution of intermarriage and sexual relations among the various racial and ethnic groups comprising the population of the United States, and the myriad ways in which “miscegenation” has affected the national cultural of the United States from colonial times to the present.

Crossing the Color Line: Narratives of Passing in American Literature

St. Mary’s College of Maryland
English 400.01
Fall 2008

Christine Wooley, Assistant Professor of English
     
This course will consider representations of passing (and thus also miscegenation) in nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture. While passing has often been depicted-and dismissed-as an act of racial betrayal, more recent criticism has suggested that we view these depictions of racial transgression and deception in more complicated ways. In this class, we will analyze various narratives centered around passing and miscegenation as sites through which we can better examine-and understand-the construction of racial identities in particular historical and political contexts. We will ask whether or not narratives about passing and miscegenation challenge the stability of racial categories. Likewise, we will pay close attention to how such narratives also engage issues of class, ethnicity, and gender. Syllabus may include works by authors such as Harriet Wilson, William Wells Brown, Lydia Maria Child, Frances Harper, William Dean Howells, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, Toni Morrison, and Philip Roth. In addition, this class will also draw on a selection of historical and legal documents, current critical works on race, and films such as The Jazz Singer and Imitation of Life.

Crossing the Color Line: Racial Passing in American Literature

Wesleyan University
AMST 322 / ENGL 319
Fall 2015

Amy Cynthia Tang, Assistant Professor of English

Narratives of racial passing having long captivated readers and critics alike for the way in which they provocatively raise questions about the construction, reinforcement, and subversion of racial categories. This course will consider several examples of the “literature of passing” as it has been established as a category within African American literature alongside more ambiguously classified 20th-century narratives of ethnic masquerade and cultural assimilation as a way of exploring how literary and film texts invoke, interrogate, and otherwise explore categories of race, gender, class, and sexual identity.

Key texts will include James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Nella Larsen’s Passing, Douglas Sirk’s film Imitation of Life, Richard Rodriguez’s memoir Hunger of Memory, Chang-Rae Lee’s novel A Gesture Life, and Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain.