Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race America: Identities and Culture

Fifteenth Annual American Studies Conference
Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55105
2014-02-27 through 2014-02-28

Keynote Address
Thursday, 2014-02-27, 18:00-19:30 CST (Local Time)
Alexander G. Hill Ballroom
Kagin Commons, Macalester

Keynote Speakers:

Ralina L. Joseph, Associate Professor of Communication
University of Washington

Author of: Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial (Duke University Press, 2012).

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Co-editor of: War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013).

Cover design by Ricardo Levins Morales

The American Studies Department at Macalester College is honored to host the 15th annual American Studies Conference, “Mixed Race America: Identities and Culture.”

Held every February during Black History Month, the conference brings renowned scholars to campus to present their work and engage with faculty, staff, students, alumni and Twin Cities residents. The conference seeks to highlight the links between scholarship, activism and civic engagement. Each year a different theme is selected based on pertinent issues.

The American Studies Department serves as the academic focal point for the study of race and ethnicity in a national and transnational framework.

For more information on the American Studies Department or this event, contact Kathie Scott at scott@macalester.edu.

For more information, click here. Read the program guide here.

Miscegenating Racial Representations: Critical Mixed Race Strategies and the Visual Arts

College Art Association 102nd Annual Conference
Hilton Chicago
720 South Michigan Avenue
International South, 2nd Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60605
2014-02-15, 14:30-17:00 CST (Local Time)

Chairs:

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

Margo Machida, Associate Professor of Art History and Asian American Studies
University of Connecticut

This session will examine critical mixed race strategies for the miscegenation of racial representation in the visual arts. The 2000 U.S. Census was first to allow individuals to self enumerate as more than one race. Making multiracial populations visible both expanded the borders, blurred and posed a potential threat to existing monoracial categories. Beginning in the early 2000s there was a simultaneous neoliberal and conservative push for a postidentitarian/ postracial moment posed against the putative ossification of multicultural racial identity constructs. Curatorial frameworks and studio practices centered on race as a locus of investigation were challenged if not rendered invisible and seemingly obsolete. And yet race and attendant cultural issues have demonstrably remained pertinent for artistic production and analysis. A double tension has resulted in moves to both recognize the continuing importance of race and the critical push to reframe and disarticulate categories that cannot contain the complexity of increasingly miscegenated peoples, histories, and subjectivities. We will consider how dominant conceptions of race have changed (or not) in the visual arts as a result of the mounting discourses and bodies of artistic production that bring forward mixed race identity in various domestic, transnational and international contexts.

Beyond the Bronze Venus
Alison Fraunhar, Associate Professor of Art and Design
Saint Xavier University

Sensory Miscegenations: Representing Multiracial Bodies
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, California College of the Arts

Lacuna
Maya Isabella Mackrandilal, Independent Artist

Liminal Embodiments
Zavé Martohardjono, Independent Artist

Risky Subjectivity: Select Works by Korean Adoptee Artists
Eun Jung Park, Independent Scholar

“Global Mixed Race,” the 3rd biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be held at DePaul University in Chicago November 13-15, 2014.

Critical Mixed Race Studies
2013-09-16

Conference Description: Global Mixed Race, the third biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be hosted at DePaul University in Chicago, November 13th-15th, 2014. It will bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines around the world to facilitate a global conversation about the transnational, transdisciplinary, and transracial field of Critical Mixed Race Studies.

Registration: Conference registration is free, compliments of DePaul University, however, registration is still required. You are highly encouraged to register early, but “day-of,” or “walk-in,” registration will also be permitted. Confirmed presenters must register by October 1, 2014, in order to be recognized in the printed program.” Register here: http://condor.depaul.edu/dpulas/cmrs/2014/

Proposals: We invite panels, roundtables, and papers that address the conference theme, although participants are also welcome to submit proposals that speak to their own specialized research, pedagogical, or community-based interests. The primary criterion for selection will be the quality of the proposal, not its connection to the conference theme. Proposals might consider the ways different disciplines approach or provide methodologies for critical analyses of mixed race issues. Proposals might also consider the following ideas as related to this year’s themes:

• tracing the history and historiography of mixed race in academic, popular, and legal discourses in a global context;
• identifying and measuring the impact of global migration, settlement, and sociocultural encounter and interaction on these mixed-race histories and historiographies;
• encouraging broad, interdisciplinary debate connecting different historical periods and seemingly disparate or far-flung regions of the world, such as comparative racial ideology in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia or the study of comparative anti-miscegenation laws.

Panels, papers, and roundtable proposal submission deadline: January 15^th, 2014
Completed applications should be e-mailed back to cmrs@depaul.edu with the subject line appropriate to the type of submission (e.g., CMRS 2014 Panel Application).

• CMRS 2014 Panel Application
• CMRS 2014 Paper Application
• CMRS 2014 Roundtable Application

Information Fair Exhibitor Application deadline: August 28, 2014

CMRS 2014 Exhibitor Application

Mixed Roots Stories

Mixed Roots Stories is partnering with Critical Mixed Race Studies in bringing arts and cultural programming to the 2014 conference. We are seeking submissions from performing artists and filmmakers whose work explores stories of racial and cultural mixing as a central theme. The overall theme for the 2014 conference is “Global Mixed Race,” and submissions that reflect this will be given special consideration.

We will be screening short films on Thursday evening, November 13, 2014, and holding a live performance showcase on Friday evening, November 14, 2014.

Films: We are looking for short films under 15 minutes. Your submission should include an online link to your film (private link is fine), a press kit, and a short statement (50 words or less) on how the film addresses the mixed experience and fits the theme “Global Mixed Race” (trailers for feature films will be accepted).

Live performance showcase: We are looking for stand-up comedy, spoken word, dance, short scenes, monologues, vocalists, musicians – or other forms of live performance. Your piece for the showcase should not be longer than 8 minutes. Your submission should include an online link with no less than a 2 minute preview of exactly what you will present, and a short statement (50 words or less) on how the piece addresses the mixed experience and fits the theme “Global Mixed Race.”

Mixed Roots Stories submission deadline: January 15th, 2014
Please e-mail Mixed Roots Stories submission materials to: cmrs@depaul.edu with the subject line:CMRS 2014 Mixed Roots Stories Application.

Contacts

CMRS Conference organizer:

Camilla Fojas, Professor Latin American and Latino Studies and Vincent de Paul Professor
e-mail: mailto:cfojas@depaul.edu
phone: (773) 325-4994

Mixed Roots Stories and arts programming contact:

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media, & Design and Vincent de Paul Professor
e-mail: lkinaaro@depaul.edu
phone: (773) 325-4048

INDIGO: An Exhibit of Textiles

Gandhi Memorial Center
4748 Western Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland, 20816
Washington, D.C.
Phone: 301-320-6871

Opening Reception:
Saturday, 2013-11-16, 14:00-16:00 EST (Local Time)
Inaugural Remarks at 14:30 EST

INDIGO, an exhibition of textiles by Laura Kina and Shelly Jyoti will be inaugurated at the Gandhi Memorial Center in cooperation with the Embassy of India and with support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations on November 16th at the Gandhi Memorial Center, from 2pm to 4pm. Mr. Taranjit Singh Sandhu, Deputy Chief of Mission, will be the distinguished guest for the afternoon. The exhibition features Laura Kina’s “Devon Avenue Sampler” and Shelly Jyoti’s “Indigo Narratives”.  The common thread between both bodies of work is the color indigo blue from India’s colonial past, to indigo-dyed Japanese kasuri fabrics and boro patchwork quilts, through blue threads of a Jewish prayer tallis, to working class blue jeans in the U.S.  Since 2009, “Indigo” has exhibited in galleries and cultural centers in Baroda, New Delhi, Mumbai, Seattle, Miami, and Chicago.

For more information, click here.

Mixing Racial Messages

Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art & its Discontents
2013-10-30

Ryan Wong

Starting with its title, the group exhibition War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art  at Seattle’s Wing Luke museum asks a provocative question: how do those seen by Americans as products of either colonial domination or subversive desire move past those categories? How do they escape, as the curators put it, an “identity defined by their parentage,” “fixed in the status of infants or children”?

Paradoxically, War Baby/Love Child begins with that parentage in order to make room for the artist to grow past it. Organized by Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis, it is the most significant exhibition on the subject since Kip Fulbeck’s groundbreaking Hapa Project, which began in 2002. In the decade since, we have seen America’s multiracial population grow a third, to 9 million, not to mention the election of our first mixed race President…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial couples now part of mainstream

The Chicago Tribune
2013-10-23

Dawn Turner Trice, Reporter

Mixed-race relationships becoming more common in Chicago — and everywhere else

Stephen Blessman and Patricia Jones Blessman met in the mid-1990s and fell in love. It didn’t matter to either of them that he’s white and she’s African-American.

They have a lot in common. They are both Roman Catholic and deeply involved in the church. They came of age in the 1960s and are socially conscious.

“But we didn’t get married to prove a point,” said Blessman, 57, who lives with his wife of 14 years and their 5-year-old son in Chicago’s South Loop. “I fell in love with her because she’s funny, beautiful, smart and principled and we’re of the same generation and have the same values.”

As an interracial couple in America, the Blessmans are a relatively rare pairing — but such couples are not nearly as rare as they used to be. A study by the Pew Research Center found that in 2010 about 15 percent of all new marriages in the U.S. were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity — more than double the 6.7 percent in 1980.

The surge has brought the percentage of all current U.S. marriages that are interracial to 8.4 percent. In Chicago, about 7.4 percent of marriages in 2011 involved mixed-race couples, according to data compiled by the Center for Governmental Studies at Northern Illinois University…

…Even in politics, where for many years it was considered a drawback to be in an interracial relationship, there’s been a shift. In New York City, Bill de Blasio, a white man married to a black woman, is the front-runner in the mayoral race. In Illinois, two prominent white political figures, Gov. Pat Quinn and former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, are dating black women. And of course, President Barack Obama is the product of an interracial marriage.

Even so, experts say modern mixed-race relationships, like the country’s racial past, can be complicated.

“When I research in white communities across the class division and the country, people say they’re fine with interracial relationships,” said Erica Chito Childs, an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College/CUNY Graduate Center.

“But they also say, ‘Why do it? Marriage is difficult enough. Why make it more difficult?’ You hear about young people growing up in a more multiracial world and being so much more accepting, but the majority says dating is fine, marriage is not.”

She said that many young people still live in racially homogenous neighborhoods and their first pool of partners tends to reflect that. In addition, first marriages are often more closely tied to the expectations of family and community members…

…The Pew Research Center study released last year, using 2010 data, is the most recent major look at interracial relationships. It found that among new marriages in 2010, Asians were the group most likely to intermarry, at 27.7 percent. Hispanics were next at 25.7 percent, then blacks at 17.1 percent and whites at 9.4 percent. For the Pew study, marriages between two people who are mixed-race weren’t considered interracial.

In Chicago, the most common interracial marriages in 2011 were between Asians and whites. Those types of pairings were about four times more likely than black-white marriages, according to data compiled by the Center for Governmental Studies, using the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.

Laura Kina, 40, is Japanese-American and white. For the past 16 years she has been married to Mitch Aronson, 54, who’s white and Jewish. She grew up as an evangelical Christian in a small Seattle suburb of Norwegian immigrants, and converted to Judaism after marrying. She said she’s always identified as a person of color…

…Online dating has made it easier for people who want to date interracially but don’t work together or hang out in racially diverse circles.

“It provides a safe space for people who are afraid of rejection and don’t feel comfortable walking up to someone of a different race and asking them out,” said Hunter College’s Childs, the author of “Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture.”…

Read the entire article here.

Behind the Curtain | Race is common theme in local exhibits

City Living Seattle
2013-09-19

Jessica Davis, Columnist

According to the 2000 Census, Washington state ranks ninth in the country for interracial marriages. Overall, people of color make up more than 34 percent of Seattle residents.

“RACE: Are We So Different?” at the Pacific Science Center and the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience’s exhibit “War Baby/Love Child” each take a different angle on racial themes and address some common misconceptions about race.

“There is a lot of great work being done by all sizes of local arts and cultural groups around the topic of race,” said Diana Johns, vice president of exhibits for Pacific Science Center. “Pacific Science Center is happy to be able to contribute to this continuum of broader community conversation alongside local institutions like the Wing.”…

…Different races, approaches

The Wing’s exhibit “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” curated by DePaul University associate professor Laura Kina and San Francisco State University associate professor Wei Ming Dariotis, includes works by 19 mixed-race artists and brings to light the different approaches to the identities and experiences of mixed Asian Americans and mixed Pacific Islander Americans.

The project makes visible underrepresented histories with Asian-American studies, mixed-race studies and contemporary art. Through video, installation and other approaches, artists explore a range of topics, including multiculturalism, gender and sexual identity, citizenship and nationality, and transracial adoption.

One such piece, “Guardian,” a painting at the entrance of the exhibit, gives a nod to creator Louie Gong’s Native and Chinese roots, with two foo dogs and three eagles stacked like a totem pole…

Read the entire article here.

Art at Wing Luke Museum explores mixed-race heritage

The Seattle Times
2013-08-19

Robert Ayers, Special to The Seattle Times

The thought-provoking “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian-American Art” exhibition is showing at the Wing Luke in Seattle through Jan. 19, 2014.

“War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian-American Art,” currently at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, is a jewel of an exhibition that has been organized and curated by Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis.

As their provocative title suggests, the curators — both scholars in the field of mixed-race studies — see their role not only to present a group of stimulating high-quality works (which they have done anyway,) but also to encourage a new understanding of what “mixed race” means. The last thing they intend is a celebration of multiculturalism, and instead, they stress that there is nothing new or exceptional about mixed-race heritage. These are issues that are more than political for them, and for the artists they have included in the show, because they are part of the fabric of their own experience…

Read the entire article here.

“War Baby/Love Child~Capturing the Artistry of Mixed Identity

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-08-07, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

Born in Riverside, California in 1973 to an Okinawan father from Hawai’i and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, Laura Kina was raised in Poulsbo, WA, a small Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest, and currently lives and works in a Jewish and South Asian neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. She is a visual artist, curator, and author whose research is focused on Asian American and mixed race identities and history. Kina is a Vincent de Paul associate professor of Art, Media, & Design at DePaul University and the coeditor, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013).

Laura Kina is a cofounder of the DePaul biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies conference and cofounder and co-managing editor of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies. She has exhibited her artwork across the U.S. and internationally including at the Chicago Cultural Center, India Habitat Centre, Nehuru Art Centre, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, and the Spertus Museum.

Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis have curated an exhibition “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” which features the work of 19 contemporary artists. It debuted at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago this past spring and will open up tomorrow night, April 8, 2013 at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle and will run through January 19, 2014.

For more information, click here.

War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art Opening Reception

Wing Luke Museum
719 South King Street
Seattle, Washington
Thursday, 2013-08-08, 18:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join us for the opening reception of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art.

As an increasingly ethnically ambiguous Asian American generation is coming of age, this multi-platform project looks at how mixed-heritage Asian American artists address hybrid identities in their artwork. The exhibit features work by an ethnically diverse set of artists, including Kip Fulbeck, Louie Gong, and Amanda Ross-Ho.

Curators Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis will be in attendance at the opening, as will several artists featured in the exhibit.

For more on the exhibit, visit http://www.warbabylovechild.com/

6-7pm: Preview for museum members and invited guests. RSVP to mmartinez@wingluke.org or 206.623.5124 ext 107.

7-8pm: Open to the public. Free admission, no RSVP required.

For more information, click here.