Mixed Race Studies

Announcing the appointment of Dr. Minelle Mahtani as Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty

The University of British Columbia
Office of the Provost & Vice-President Academic
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2018-07-17

The Provost is pleased to announce that Dr. Minelle Mahtani has been appointed to the role of Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, a new position that will support the university’s institutional commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in the scholarly and leadership environment for faculty members at UBC. This 40% position is initially for a two-year term, commencing September 1, 2018. Dr. Mahtani holds her professorial appointment in the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice in the Faculty of Arts.

Since 2009, Dr. Mahtani has been an Associate Professor in Human Geography and Journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough, serving as the Associate Chair of the Department of Human Geography from 2014-2015. She received her PhD in Geography from University College London in 2000. Dr. Mahtani is the Past President of the Association for Canadian Studies, and former Chair of Metropolis-Ontario (CERIS – Centre for Excellence on Immigration and Settlement). She is the 2012 Winner of the Glenda Laws Award from the Association of American Geographers for outstanding contributions to geography and social policy, and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal Award winner. Dr. Mahtani is a former television news journalist with the CBC and has consulted with a variety of organizations on diversity and journalism, including Citizenship Immigration Canada and the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Integration, among other groups. She is the former strategic counsel for the not-for-profit IMPACS (Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society).

Professor Mahtani’s research interests are in the areas of diversity initiatives; anti-colonial approaches in critical geography; global mixed-race theory and critical race theory; and structural and systemic racism as experienced among academics of colour…

Read the entire press release here.

Irrevocable Ties and Forgotten Ancestry: The Legacy of Colonial Intermarriage for Descendents of Mixed Ancestry

University of British Columbia, Vancouver
April 2008
56 pages

Kim S. Dertien

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Anthropology)

The identities of mixed Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal descendents in British Columbia is as varied as it is complex. In this paper I examine what caused some people of mixed Native and non-Native ancestry not to identify as Aboriginal while others did. The point of fracture for those who identify with their Aboriginal origins and those who do not can be traced to a specific time in our history. More importantly, specific variables were instrumental in causing that divergence of identity, spurred by a pervasive social stigma in colonial society. For many of mixed ancestry, the disassociation from their Aboriginal identity led to generations of silence and denial and eventually to a ‘complete disappearance of race’. It was a deliberate breeding out of cultural identity through assimilative ideology and actions in order to conform to European norms.

Determining what factors caused this divergence of identity for mixed-descendents entails considering why many Aboriginal women married non-Native partners in B.C. during the mid-19th century, how intermarriage affected identity formation for offspring, and what the multi-generational effects have been on the identities of mixed descendents. Today, this leaves a dilemma for those in-between who are eligible for status, and for those who are not but who choose to reconnect with, acknowledge and learn more of their ancestry. Both assertions of First Nations identity and choices to reconnect with a First Nations heritage while maintaining a non-Native identity, challenge the assumed inevitability of assimilation, and the federal government’s continuing reluctance to understand the cultural significance of identification as ‘Indian’.

Read the entire thesis here.

ENGL 490: Multi-Ethnic and Mixed-Race Identities in Literature and Film

University of British Columbia
Winter 2011

Glenn Deer, Assistant Professor of English

This course will examine literary and selected filmic representations of interracial and inter-ethnic identities, mixed-race relationships and intermarriage, and bicultural communities in comparative national and international contexts. We shall be especially concerned with the ways in which North American literature and cinema challenge dominant constructions of community identities in terms of ethnic and racial categories. (We will also look at one British film by Mike Leigh.) We will consider such pertinent issues as the problems of identity formation and voice in mixed-race communities, the politics of multiculturalism, and the history of attitudes towards racial boundary crossing.

THEORY (Selections from the following to be available as a custom course packet at the UBC bookstore.)

1. David Parker and Miri Song, eds., Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’ (Pluto 2001)
2. Les Back and John Solomos, eds., Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (Routledge 2000)
3. Martha Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History (New York UP 1999)
4. Robert Young, Colonial Desire (Routledge 1995)

Required readings will include the following:  We will usually consider one literary work or a film alongside a relevant critical article or chapter each week.

1. Canadian multiracial writing
   • Maria Campbell, Halfbreed (M&S 1973)
   • Marty Chan, Mom, Dad I’m Living With a White Girl (NeWest 2000)
   • Sky Lee, Disappearing Moon Cafe (Douglas and McIntyre 1990)
   • Fred Wah, Diamond Grill (NeWest 1996)
   • Lawrence Hill, Black Berry, Sweet Juice (Harper Perrenial 2002)
   • Carol Camper, ed., Miscegenation Blues (Sister Vision 1994) [Selections]
2. American multiracial writing
   • Gish Jen, Mona in the Promised Land (Vintage 1996)
   • Nella Larsen, Passing (Penguin 2000)
   • James McBride, The Color of Water (Riverhead 1997)
   • Sigrid Nunez, A Feather on the Breath of God (HarperCollins 1994)
   • Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (Riverhead 1995)
3. Canadian, American, and British Films
   • Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever
   • Mina Shum, Double Happiness
   • Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies
   • Anne Marie Nakagawa, Between: Living in the Hyphen
   • Others TBA and guided by student preferences

Course requirements:

• An oral presentation
• a prepared response to a classmate’s oral presentation
• a seminar essay
• regular participation in the class discussions

History and the (Un)making of Identifications in Literary Representations of Anglo-Indians and Goan Catholics

University of British Columbia
September 2000
465 pages

Marian Josephine Gracias

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English)

This dissertation examines selected literature by and about Anglo-Indians (Eurasians) and Goan Catholics from India and the Indian diaspora, focusing on its preoccupation with the history of these communities as a site of contested identifications. Especially polemical are perceptions (due to communalist stereotypes or internalisation) of Anglo Indians and Goan Catholics as mimic or intermediary communities who ended up capitulating to British and/or Portuguese colonialist structures respectively. Larger issues for both communities in India and in the diaspora also involve questions of racial or cultural hybridity, and the slippage between religion and culture, particularly the linking of conversion to Christianity with colonisation, Westernisation, denationalisation, and non-Indianness.

I argue for a more layered understanding of the concepts of mimicry, hybridity, and resistance in relation to identifications from these communities. By choosing literature set in times of national crisis and historical change (in India, and in East Africa for the Goan diaspora), I have been attentive to the varying ways in which literary characters and narrators confront, project, or elide contradictions of proximity and difference in the production of racial, cultural, and national identity. The main literary texts in the discussion of Anglo- Indian identifications include John Masters’ “Bhowani Junction”, Manorama Mathai’s “Mulligatawny Soup”, Stephen Alter’s “Neglected Lives” and Allan Sealy’s “The Trotter-Nama”. In these texts, I have examined how the narrative opens up or circumscribes the agency and racial identifications of Anglo-Indian characters. As well, I make some references to Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim” and selected work by Ruskin Bond. The central literary texts in the discussion of Goan Catholic and diasporic identifications include Lambert Mascarenhas’ “Sorrowing Lies My Land”, Kiran Nagarkar’s “Ravan and Eddie”, João da Veiga Coutinho’s “A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadow of History”, selected writing by damian lopes, and Peter Nazareth’s “In a Brown Mantle” and “The General is Up”. I also dwell in some detail on selected short stories by Lino Leitão, and Violet Dias Lannoy’s “Pears from the Willow Tree”. I examine the role of Anglo-Indian and Goan Catholic women literary characters, making the case that, for the most part, it is male characters who are given political and narrative complexity in terms of negotiating colonialism and nationalism, and that women characters, when central, are imaged as mediating grounds to advance or block access to male characters who are competing over nationalist and colonialist discourses about race and sexuality. An exception is the poetry of Eunice de Souza where there is critical reflection on the position of Goan Catholic women.

Where relevant, I draw from particular areas of cultural studies, postcolonial and feminist theories (including those dealing with psychoanalysis), and writings about Indian history and nationalism. Writings from these areas offer pertinent insights on ambivalence in the production of subjectivity, and on the construction of Indianness in relation to arguments on colonialism, gender, caste, class, secularism, and the religious right (especially the discourses of Hindutva). While the identifications and identity of Anglo-Indians and Goan Catholics appear in the genre of history, these communities are largely absent or peripheral in the area of literary analysis, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory pertaining to India. Therefore, I hope that a study of these communities will contribute to the discussion of religious and multiracial identifications that is increasingly relevant to the field of postcolonial and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue: Copy Cat Copy Cat?
• Chapter 1: “A Certain Way of Being There”
  • 1.1 Introduction
  • 1.2 Proximity and Distance: Colonialism and the Construction of Mimic Subjectivity
  • 1.3 Forms of Mimic Subjectivity and the Question of Subversion
  • 1.4 Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Construction of Indianness
• Chapter 2: Negotiating Classifications: Writing an Anglo-Indian History
  • 2.1 Introducing Mixed Race Classifications
  • 2.2 Anglo-Indians and the Discourse of Mixed Races under British Colonialism
  • 2.3 Scientific Racialism and Other Discourses of Mixed Races
  • 2.4 Conclusion: (Dis)placing Anglo-Indian Classifications and Affiliation
• Chapter 3: (By) Passing Stereotypes of Anglo-Indian Identifications in Literature
  • 3.1 Literary Antecedents: Representations of Mixed Race People
  • 3.2 “Species Loyally”: Anglo-Indian Identifications in John Masters’ Bhowani Junction
  • 3.3 Between Homes: Manorama Mathai’s Mulligatawny Soup
  • 3.4 Escaping from History: Stephen Alter’s Neglected Lives
  • 3.5 Interracial Relationships in Bhowani Junction, Mulligatawny Soup and Neglected Lives: Possibilities and Closures
• Chapter 4: Beyond Doom and Gloom: Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama
  • 4.1 Introduction: Alternatives to Stereotypes of Anglo-Indian Identifications
  • 4.2 Contending with “The Grey Man’s Burden”: Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama
• Chapter 5: Writing Identity in Goan History
  • 5.1 Claims in the Writing of Goan History.
  • 5.2 Early History of the Portuguese in India and Goa
  • 5.3 Mixing Trade, Religion, and Race
  • 5.4 Conversion to Christianity and the Practice of Religion Under British and Portuguese Colonialism
  • 5.5 Caste, Conversion, and National Identity in Portuguese Goa and British India
  • 5.6 Placing the Politics of Resistance to Portuguese Rule
  • 5.7 Claiming Goa: Liberation or Invasion?.
  • 5.8 The Impact of Language and Migration in the Construction of Goan Identity Today
  • 5.9 Colonial and Caste Effects in Locating Conversion to Christianity Within Communal and Secular Debates in Contemporary India
• Chapter 6: Identifications in Crisis: Goan Catholics in Literature
  • 6.1 The Question of Goan Identity
  • 6.2 Writing Against Colonialism: Lambert Mascarenhas’ Sorrowing Lies My Land, Lino Leitão’s “The Miracle” and “Armando Rodrigues”
  • 6.3 The Crisis of Leadership: Violet Dias Lannoy’s Pears from the Willow Tree and Lambert Mascarenhas’ A Greater Tragedy
  • 6.4 Interrogating Gender: The Poetry of Eunice de Souza
  • 6.5 Hindus and Catholics: Where Parallel Worlds of Difference Meet in the Horizon of Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie
• Chapter 7: “The Intimate Outsider”: History and Location in Literature from the Goan Catholic Diaspora
  • 7.1 Introductory Issues in Writing Diaspora
  • 7.2 The Search for a Theory of Goan History: João da Veiga Coutinho’s A Kind of Absence: Life in the Shadow of History.
  • 7.3 East African Goan Catholics: Narrating the Third That Walks Between Black and White in Peter Nazareth’s In a Brown Mantle and The General Is Up
  • 7.4 Intermediary Positions and Peter Nazareth’s Narrators
  • 7.5 Navigating Historical Legacies in damian lopes’ Writing
• Chapter 8: Epilogue: The Politics of Engagement
• Works Cited

Read the entire dissertation here.

The Influence of K-12 Schooling on the Identity Development of Multiethnic Students

University of British Columbia, Vancouver
April 2010

Erica Mohan

Thesis submitted in the partial fulfullment of the requirments for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Graduate Studies (Educational Studies)

This study examined the influence of K-12 schooling on the racial and ethnic identity development of 23 self-identified multiethnic students attending high schools across the San Francisco Bay Area. All of the students participated in a semi-structured interview, nine participated in one of two focus groups, and five completed a writing activity. I approached this study with a postpositivist realist conception of identity (Mohanty, 2000; Moya, 2000a/b) that takes seriously the fluidity and complexity of identities as well as their epistemic and real-world significance. In defining racial and ethnic identity formation, I borrowed Tatum’s (1997) understanding of it as “the process of defining for oneself the personal significance and social meaning of belonging to a particular racial [and/or ethnic] group” (p. 16).

The findings from this study indicate that the formal aspects of schooling (e.g., curriculum and diversity education initiatives) rarely directly influence the racial and ethnic identity development of multiethnic students. They do, however, shape all students’ racial and ethnic understandings and ideologies, which in turn shape the informal aspects of schooling (e.g., interactions with peers and racial and ethnic divisions within the student body) which exert direct influence over multiethnic students’ experiences and identities. Of course, schooling is not alone in shaping the racial and ethnic understandings and ideologies of the general student body; other influences such as family and neighborhood context cannot be discounted. Nevertheless, the findings indicate that schools are sites of negotiation, that these negotiations influence multiethnic students’ identities, and that these negotiations occur in the context of, and are shaped by, both formal and informal aspects of schooling, including, but not limited to, school demographics, curricula, race and ethnicity-based student organizations, and interactions between all members of the school community. Based on the findings, it is recommended that educators infuse the curriculum and classroom discussions with issues of race, ethnicity, multiethnicity, and difference; actively engage in the process of complicating, contesting, and deconstructing racial and ethnic categories and their classificatory power; and end the silence regarding multiethnicity in schools and ensure its authentic inclusion in the curriculum.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• LIST OF TABLES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
  • Context
  • Problem Statement and Purpose
  • Research Questions and Methods
  • Definitions
    • Schooling vs. Education
    • Race, Ethnicity, and Multiethnicity
  • Limitations and Delimitations
  • Overview of the Dissertation
  • Significance of the Study
• CHAPTER TWO: CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL FRAMING OF IDENTITY
  • An Essentialist Approach to Identity
  • Postmodern and Poststructural Approaches to Identity
  • A Postpositivist Realist Approach to Identity
  • A Theory of Multiplicity
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER THREE: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
  • Section I: Multiethnic Identity Development
  • Section II: Problem, Equivalent, and Variant Approaches to Multiethnic Identity
    • Problem Approaches to Multiethnic Identity
    • Equivalent and Variant Approaches to Multiethnic Identity
  • Section III: Schooling and Student Identity Construction
    • Overview of Multicultural and Antiracism Education
    • Critiques of Multicultural and Antiracism Education
  • Section IV: The K-12 Schooling Experiences of Multiethnic Students
  • Section V: Integrating the Literature
• CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY
  • Participant and Site Selection
  • Research Procedures
    • Semi-Structured Interviews
    • Focus Groups
    • Writing Activity
  • Data Analysis and Presentation
    • Starting Points
    • Generating Participant Profiles
    • Analysis of the Data Relating to K-12 Schooling Experiences
  • The Complexities of Researching Multiethnic Identities
  • Self as Research “Instrument”
    • Insider/Outsider Research
    • Self as Insider/Outsider
    • Additional Methodological Considerations
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER FIVE: PARTICIPANT PROFILES
  • Jill
  • Mialany
  • Dana
  • Andrea
  • Anthony
  • Frank
  • Jasmine
  • David
  • Cara
  • Amaya
  • Raya
  • Barry
  • Christina
  • Kendra
  • Renee
  • Jen
  • Hip Hapa
  • Kelley
  • Josh
  • Jordan
  • Anne
  • Hannah
  • Marie
  • Discussion
• CHAPTER SIX: PARTICIPANTS’ EXPERIENCES AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE FORMAL ASPECTS OF K-12 SCHOOLING
  • Documentation of Racial and Ethnic Identities
  • Race and Ethnicity-Based Student Organizations
  • Relationships and Interactions with Teachers and Administrators
  • Specific Lessons, Projects, and Classroom Activities
  • (Not) Learning about Multiethnicity
  • (Not) Learning about Race and Ethnicity
  • Diversity Education Initiatives
  • Integrating the Data
• CHAPTER SEVEN: PARTICIPANTS’ EXPERIENCES AND PERCEPTIONS OF THE INFORMAL ASPECTS OF K-12 SCHOOLING
  • School Diversity
  • Friendships
  • Diverse Friendship Networks and Boundary Crossing
  • Friends with Similar Identities and Heritages
  • Stereotypes
  • Challenged Identities
  • Racial Tension at School
  • Integrating the Data
• CHAPTER EIGHT: PARTICIPANTS’ BROADER REFLECTIONS ON SCHOOLING AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR EDUCATORS
  • Participant Perspectives
  • Integrating the Data
    • Correcting a “Blindness” Towards Multiethnic Students
    • Talking About Race (and Ethnicity and Multiethnicity)
    • Specifically Addressing Multiethnicity
    • Getting an Early Start
    • We All Have Similar “Needs”
    • A Desire for Awareness and Understanding
• CHAPTER NINE: CONCLUSION
  • Research Questions and Findings
  • Implications and Recommendations for Educators
  • Future Research Directions
  • Reflections on the Research Methodology
  • Reflections on a Postpositivist Realist Framing of Identity
  • Concluding Thoughts
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • Appendix I – Semi-Structured Interview Protocol
  • Appendix II – Writing Activity Prompt
  • Appendix III – Maria Root’s 50 Experiences of Racially Mixed People
  • Appendix IV – Behavioral Research Ethics Board Certificate of Approval

Read the entire thesis here.

Emerging whole from Native-Canadian relations: mixed ancestry narratives: a thesis

University of British Columbia
1999-04-25

Dawn Marsden

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Educational Stuides.

After hundreds of years of contact, the relationships between the people of Native Nations and the Canadian Nation are still filled with turmoil. This is common knowledge. What isn’t well known, are the personal consequences for children who have Native and non-Native ancestors. This thesis is written with the assistance of eight people of mixed ancestry, who share their experiences, ideas, strategies and dreams, to help others who are dealing with similar issues. This thesis has been organized around the dominant themes and commonalities that have emerged out of eight interviews, into four sections: CONTEXT, CHALLENGES, STRATEGIES & GIFTS. The context that mixed ancestry individuals are born into is complex. Euro-Canadian designs on Native lands and resources resulted in policies that had, and continue to have, a devastating effect on Native people. Legal manipulations of Native identity, in particular, have resulted in the emergence of hierarchies of belonging. Such hierarchies are maintained by enduring stereotypes of “Indianness” and “Whiteness”. For some mixed ancestry individuals, negotiating the polarized hierarchies of Native and Canadian societies can result in feelings of being split, and the need to harmonize aspects of the self, with varying social environments. Various strategies are used to deal with such issues, internally and externally. Ultimately, through choices, strategies and transformations, it is possible to transcend the challenges of mixed ancestry, and to lead more fulfilling lives. My hope is that this thesis will be of assistance to people of mixed ancestry and to those trying to understand the complexities of Native- Canadian relations, at least to the point of inspiring more discussions and research.

Read the entire thesis here.

The erasure of the Afro element of mestizaje in modern Mexico: the coding of visibly black mestizos according to a white aesthetic in and through the discourse on nation during the cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1968

University of British Columbia
September 2001
166 pages

Marco Polo Hernández Cuevas, Associate Professor of Spanish
North Carolina Central University

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Faculty of Graduate Studies.

“The Erasure of the Essential Afro Element of Mestizaje in Modern Mexico: The Coding of Visibly Black Mestizos According to a White Aesthetic In and Through the Discourse on Nation During the Cultural Phase of the Mexican Revolution, 1920-1968″ examines how the Afro elements of Mexican mestizaje were erased from the ideal image of the Mexican mestizo and how the Afro ethnic contributions were plagiarized in modern Mexico. It explores part of the discourse on nation in the narrative produced by authors who subscribed to the belief that only white was beautiful, between 1920 and 1968, during a period herein identified as the “cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution.” It looks at the coding and distortion of the image of visibly black Mexicans in and through literature and film, and unveils how the Afro element “disappeared” from some of the most popular images, tastes in music, dance, song, food, and speech forms viewed as cultural texts that, by way of official intervention, were made “badges” of Mexican national identity.

The premise of this study is that the criollo elite and their allies, through government, disenfranchised Mexicans as a whole by institutionalizing a magic mirror—materialized in the narrative of nation—where mestizos can “see” only a partial reflection of themselves. The black African characteristics of Mexican mestizaje were totally removed from the ideal image of “Mexican-ness” disseminated in and out of the country. During this period, and in the material selected for study, wherever Afro-Mexicans—visibly Afro or not—are mentioned, they appear as “mestizos” oblivious of their African heritage and willingly moving toward becoming white.

The analysis adopts as critical foundation two essays: “Black Phobia and the White Aesthetic in Spanish American Literature,” by Richard L. Jackson; and “Mass Visual Productions,” by James Snead. In “Black Phobia…” Jackson explains that, to define “superior and inferior as well as the concept of beauty” according to how white a person is perceived to be, is a “tradition dramatized in Hispanic Literature from Lope de Rueda’s Eufemia (1576) to the present” (467). For Snead, “the coding of blacks in film, as in the wider society, involves a history of images and signs associating black skin color with servile behavior and marginal status” (142).

Read the entire thesis here.

Living, writing and staging racial hybridity

University of British Columbia
January 2006
380 pages
37 photographs/illustrations

Lisa Michelle La Flamme

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

Contemporary Canadian literature and drama that features racial hybridity represents the racially hybrid soma text as a unique form of embodiment and pays particular attention to the power of the racialized gaze. The soma text is the central concept I have developed in order to identify, address, and interrogate the signifying qualities of the racially hybrid body. Throughout my dissertation, I use the concept of the body as a text in order to draw attention to the different visual “readings” that are stimulated by this form of embodiment. In each chapter, I identify the centrality of racially hybrid embodiment and investigate the power of the racialized gaze involved in the interpellation of these racially hybrid bodies.

I have chosen to divide my study into discrete chapters and to use specific texts to illuminate my central concepts and to identify the strategies that can be used to express agency over the process of interpellation. In Chapter One I explain my methodology, define the terminology and outline the theories that are central to my analysis. In Chapter Two, I consider the experiences of mixed race people expressing agency by self-defining in the genre of autobiography. In Chapter Three, I explore the notion of racial drag as represented in fiction. In Chapter Four, I consider the ways in which the performative aspects of racial hybridity are represented by theatrical means and through performance.

My analysis of the soma text and racialized gaze in these three genres offers critical terms that can be used to analyze representations of racial hybridity. By framing my analysis by way of the construction of the autobiographical voice I suggest that insight into the narrative uses of racial hybridity can be deepened and informed by a thorough analysis of the representation of the lived experience of racial hybridity in a given context. My crossgeneric and crossracial methodology implicitly asserts the importance of the inclusion of different types of racial hybridity in order to understand the power of the racially hybrid body as a signifier in contemporary Canadian literature and drama.

Read the entire dissertation here.

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.]