Mixed Race Studies

#471: Mixed Race in a Box: Teaching Mixed Race in the 21st Century

The 28th Annual National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE)
Washington Hilton
1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20009
2015-05-26 through 2015-05-30

Friday, 2015-05-29, 15:30-17:30 EDT (Local Time)

In Fall 2013, The Asian American Literary Review published Mixed Race in a Box, a multimedia project equal parts art piece, anthology, and innovative educational tool. It has since been adopted as a course text for teaching race and mixed race in over 80 college and university classrooms in 6 countries—the U.S., Ireland, Argentina, Hong Kong, Poland, and Germany.

Popular consciousness of “multiracialism” is at an all-time high, and with it, student (and faculty) needs for reflecting personally and academically on mixed identities and the histories and realities of mixed race. But what exactly does it mean to teach mixed race? What are we teaching, and how, and why? Where—in what disciplines? And who are we teaching—what understandings of race and mixed race are our students, across the U.S. and beyond, bringing into the classroom?

This proposed session will outline Mixed Race in a Box as a pedagogical experiment, opening to a larger discussion of teaching mixed race and race more generally. It will explore how we can best equip students and teachers to think critically about race while, as the saying goes, “meeting them where they are.” Produced by an editorial team of University of Maryland students, featuring collaborative projects by leading artists, scholars, poets, and writers, the Box includes a range of unusual materials—a foldout map of mixed Native poetics, a deck of playing cards, three pocket books, photo slideshows and video art—and offers a wealth of different approaches to teaching race and mixed race. The session will examine some of these particular strategies and discuss the challenges and successes of employing them in various classrooms, with varying student constituencies, across the country. Prospective presenters will include a senior editor of the Box, a student editor of the Box, and two scholar-writers who contributed pieces to the Box and taught it in their respective classrooms.

Presenters

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota

Zohra Saed
Hunter College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, New York

Lawrence-Minh Davis, Director
Asian American Literary Review, College Park, Maryland

Andrew Mayton
University of Maryland, College Park

Radical Love: A Transatlantic Dialogue about Race and Mixed Race

Asian American Literary Review
Volume 4, Issue 2, Pandora’s Box (2013)
pages 15-26

Daniel McNeil, Ida B. Wells-Barnett Professor of African and Black Diaspora Studies
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Leanne Taylor, Assistant Professor of Education
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

Boy meets girl. Boy makes the girl laugh with some playful jibes about his English accent and her “cynical Canadian” response to a talk about radical love in America. Girl gives boy a lingering, flirtatious handshake. Boy resists the urge to say, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

This is a transatlantic love story informed by the neurotic heroes of the Facebook era as much as the stoic men of 1940s Hollywood or the stubborn women of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The boy displays similar levels of social awkwardness and ambition to the character of Marc Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, in The Social Network. Yet he has a modicum of charm and is able to craft some touching emails to the girl when he returns to England. The girl is far more interesting than any of the female characters in The Social Network and sparks back some funny Facebook messages from Canada. After reconnecting in Toronto in January 2011, they start to communicate via Blackberry instant messenger and send each other letters, books and poetry. Their conversations provide a revealing glimpse into the politics and poetics of mixed race relationships. For whereas the transracial, transdisciplinary and transnational field of mixed race studies tends to focus on the love between “interracial couples” and their children, their romantic back and forth offers a revealing glimpse into the love between two people defined as mixed race.

Read the entire article here.

The Impact of Internet Publishing and Online Communications on Mixed-Race Discourses

The Asian American Literary Review
Special Issue on Mixed Race, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Fall 2013)
Mixed Race is an Inbox: pages 127-136

Steven F. Riley, Creator
MixedRaceStudies.org: Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience

Glenn C. Robinson, Creator
MixedAmericanLife.us: Mixed Culture | Mixed Heritage | Mixed Identity

Steven F. Riley, creator of MixedRaceStudies.org, and Glenn C. Robinson, creator of MixedAmericanLife.us first met (virtually) in the chat-room of the March 16, 2011 episode of Mixed Chicks Chat and have corresponded with each other ever since. They have met each other in person at the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival in Los Angeles in 2011 and 2012.

Riley has received many comments describing how his MixedRaceStudies.org has become an integral part of college courses. Robinson’s sites are an open forum for dialog and social sharing, and have a steady growth of followers. Here, they continue their conversations about mixed race and technology.

Purchase the issue here.

Special Issue on Mixed Race [The Asian American Literary Review]

The Asian American Literary Review
2013-08-06

AALR’s special issue on mixed race, coming in Fall 2013, is not simply a reexamination of race or a survey of mixed voices, important as both are. We envision our role as that of provocateur–inspiring new conversations and cross-pollinations, pushing into new corners.

All contributions to the issue are collaborative, “mixed” in nature, bringing together folks across racial and ethnic boundaries, across disciplines, genres, regions, and generations. We solicited work from artists and writers, historians and activists, race scholars and filmmakers, teachers and students, among others. The idea is a network of original projects that not only map out multiracialism past and present but also break new ground.

[My coauthored essay with Glenn C. Robinson, titled “The Impact of Internet Publishing and Online Communications on Mixed-Race Discourses” is part of the issue.]

For more information and the Table of Contents, click here.

AAAS 348 (Fall 2013): Class, Race, and Gender—“Hapas, Hafus, Mestizos, and Muggles”

California State University, Los Angeles
Asian and Asian American Studies Program
Fall 2013

Michelle Har Kim

HAPA (from the Hawai‘ian Dictionary, Māmaka Kaiao)

1. Portion, fragment, part, fraction, installment; to be partial, less. (Eng. half) Cf. hapahā, hapalua, etc. Ka ’ike hapa, limited knowledge. Ua hapā na hae, the flags are at half-mast, ho’o.hapa To lessen, diminish.
2. Of mixed blood, person of mixed blood, as hapa Hawai‘i, part Hawaiian. See hapa haole.
3. A-minor in music. See lele 7.

What assumptions do many of us make about how mixed-race Asians are supposed to look, speak, and understand themselves? Is it true that mixed-race people in general, Asian and otherwise, are able “see,” understand, or translate two or more cultural worlds? Continuing on with this theme of visuality, looking, and seeing, this course will create a space for talking about how we and others see mixed-race and race generally as a thing that has always-already and naturally been around—or something that we construct and create ourselves for certain reasons. Questions regarding identity and authenticity will surely lead us to more issues including gender, sexuality, money, and class.

Students are required to make time for regular readings, writing, and online and Moodle access. One hard-copy text is required: the Asian American Literary Review’s 2013 Special Issue on Mixed Race. Assignments will be taken from this journal and other texts to be announced. Discussions will anchor themselves through submitted reaction papers in which you will have creative and critical opportunities to compare visual pieces with assigned readings.

For the month of October, we will draw from an online Synchronous Teaching Program Digital Lab as we participate in the Asian American Literary Review’s Mixed Race Initiative. This hub will link us with other students studying mixed race, in an exciting effort to participate in a conversation beyond bounds of our classroom.

For more information, click here.

AALR Mixed Race Initiative

Akemi Johnson
2013-03-24

Akemi Johnson

Historian Lily Anne Yumi Welty and I just finished writing our collaborative piece for The Asian American Literary Review’s special issue on mixed race, coming out this fall. Lily and I shared a summer of research (and karaoke, kaiten sushi, officers’ clubs, and sweltering traffic jams) in Okinawa, although she comes at the topic from a historical, academic angle. Working on this joint piece, we realized how differently we’re used to writing–she’s all about the outline and thesis and being explicit, while I tend to make sense of things as I go, planting dots for readers to connect. We’ll see how our mashup turns out…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop of Love: A Multimedia Solo Performance on Racial Identity by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni at University of Maryland

University of Maryland, College Park
The Stamp (Adele H. Stamp Student Union) [Directions]
Atrium Room
Friday, 2013-03-29, 17:00-19:30 EDT (Local Time)

Sponsored by the Multiracial Biracial Student Association (MBSA), Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy (MICA), The Asian American Literary Review, University of Maryland Asian American Studies Program, and Hamsa.

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Q&A afterwards hosted by:

Steven F. Riley, Founder and Creator
www.MixedRaceStudies.org

One Drop of Love is a solo performance piece that journeys from Boston, Michigan, Los Angeles, and East & West Africa from 1790 to the present as a culturally Mixed woman explores the influence of the One Drop Rule on her family and society.

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. ©2103, Evan Tamayo

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni is a leading activist concerning mixed race, and is an actor, comedian, producer and educator. One Drop of Love is her MFA thesis, and she will be using footage from her performances to make a documentary.

Admission is free.

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni and Steven F. Riley. ©2012, Laura Kina

Ms. Cox DiGiovanni appeared in the 2013 Academy Award and Golden Globe winning film Argo (2012); co-created, co-produced and co-hosted the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat (2007-2012); and co-founded and produced the annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival^® (2008-20012). For more on Ms. Cox DiGiovanni and One Drop of Love, visit: http://www.onedropoflove.org.

Call for Proposals—Special AALR Issue on Mixed Race

The Asian American Literary Review
1110 Severnview Drive
Crownsville, Maryland 21032
2019-09-17

Editors-in-Chief
Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis
Gerald Maa

Thanks to political organizing, scholarship, and the arts, not to mention media coverage, mixed race has become hyper-visible. So what’s next? AALR’s special issue on mixed race, due out in Fall 2013, won’t simply be a reexamination of race or a survey of mixed voices, important as both are. We envision our role as that of provocateur—inspiring new conversations and cross-pollinations, pushing into new corners.

What are the nerve centers of mixed race? How does mixed race mark fault lines the world over? We invite you to be the curators of this special issue, to tell us what about mixed race we need to address—and how.

All contributions to the issue will be collaborative, “mixed” in nature, bringing together folks across racial and ethnic boundaries, across disciplines, genres, countries, languages, and generations. We see the issue as a meeting point for visual artists and writers, filmmakers and activists, students and teachers and scholars of every stripe—an incubator of new ideas and fresh approaches. Multilingual exchanges and formal innovations welcome.

In Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 the issue will be a focal point for a multi-institution synchronous teaching program that connects students and faculty across the world. So far 54 classrooms in universities and colleges in seven countries have signed up. Our goal is an international, livetime, region to region, country to country conversation that builds academic, social, and civic community, a conversation that challenges and grows our understandings of race and mixed race as well as the tools and lenses we use to understand them.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

All proposals should briefly outline:

• who would be contributing to your collaborative project, with a 50-100 word bio for each contributor;
• what subject matter your collaborative project would engage;
• how it would engage that subject or set of subjects in terms of disciplinary approach(s), genre(s), and form(s) or format(s); and
• why your proposed project would be vital to the special issue.

We are accepting proposals from fully formed groups; partial groups requesting to be matched with a writer, scholar, activist, visual artist, illustrator, musician, or filmmaker; and individuals requesting to be matched with a group.

Please direct proposals to AALR.MRI.CFP@gmail.com and any questions or inquiries to editors@aalrmag.org. Deadline for proposal submissions is 11/09/2012. We will inform of decisions by mid-December 2012. Final submissions of collaborative projects will be due February 2013.

AALR is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization. All donations are fully tax-deductible.

AALR Mixed Race Initiative

The Asian American Literary Review
2012-08-26

Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, co-Editor-in-Chief

Thanks to political organizing, scholarship, and the arts, not to mention media coverage, mixed race has become hyper-visible.  So what’s next?  The Asian American Literary Review (AALR) Mixed Race Initiative, launching this Fall 2012 and running until Spring 2014, won’t simply be a reexamination of race or a survey of mixed voices, important as both are.  We envision our role as that of provocateur—inspiring new conversations and cross-pollinations, pushing into new corners.

The initiative will feature a special issue on mixed race to debut in Fall 2013, all of the contributions for which will be collaborative, “mixed” in nature, bringing together folks across racial and ethnic boundaries, across scholarly disciplines, artistic genres, countries, languages, and generations.  What are the nerve centers of mixed race?  How does mixed race mark fault lines the world over?  We invite you to tell us.  Call-for-papers in early-mid September 2012.

The second phase of the initiative will be an international, multi-institution synchronous teaching program to run in Fall 2013 and Spring 2014.  You agree to teach our special issue as a course text (for anywhere from a week to a month during the allotted time period) and we plug you into a vast network of scholars and students across the world, in classrooms ranging from indigenous studies to cultural psychology, from Latin American Studies to literary studies, from art history to race theory.  We’ll supply a shared online curriculum and coordinate various cross-classroom exchanges, with the goal of staging a real, livetime, region to region and country to country conversation about race and mixed race.  So far classrooms at 40 colleges and universities in five countries have signed on, and we hope yours will join in too.  Let’s work together to make a new model for virtual, transnational education and build new social, civic, and intellectual communities.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, click here.  If you’d like to participate in the teaching program, assist as a volunteer coordinator, or donate in support of the project, please contact us at editors@aalrmag.org.

AALR is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit.