Mixed Race Studies

Virtual Book Chat: Levan Book Chats—Rena Heinrich, Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Asian Experience in American Drama

Levan Institute of the Humanities
University of Southern California
Wednesday, 2024-02-14, 20:00Z, (12:00 PST, 15:00 EST)

A discussion of Rena Heinrich’s new book, Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Asian Experience in American Drama (Rutgers University Press, 2023). The author will be joined in conversation by SanSan Kwan (UC Berkeley) and Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain (Maynooth University), moderated by Duncan Williams (USC). Coorganized by the USC School of Dramatic Arts and the USC East Asian Studies Center.

To register, click here.

About the Author: Rena Heinrich is an associate professor of theatre practice in critical studies at the USC School of Dramatic Arts and an affiliated professor of East Asian studies in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. She is a contributor to Shape Shifters: Journeys across Terrains of Race and Identity (University of Nebraska Press, 2020) and The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century (2Leaf Press, 2017). Her next book (co-authored with Francisco Beltrán) examines American immigration mythology and its pervasive circulation through cultural artifacts within the United States.

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required.

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities’ “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

APA Leaders 2016: Meet Avalon Igawa!

USC APASA (University of Southern California Asian Pacific American Student Assembly)
2016-03-10

Hi again! Hope everyone’s doing well with only one day left to get through before spring break! Anyways, as our headline says, our third APA Leader is Avalon Igawa! Avalon’s heavily involved in the APA community being the President of SCAPE and a CIRCLE coordinator. It’s hard to find someone with her passion and energetic personality! Read more about Avalon in our interview below:

Name: Avalon Igawa Major: Political Economy (Minor: Digital Studies) Year: Junior

What does being APA mean to you? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this question, and I realize that while it used to be really hard for me, it isn’t so much anymore. And I think that’s because I finally accepted that I don’t need a concrete answer and nobody else does either. It’s a beautiful identity because we can define it for ourselves and let it represent what we want. Wow, that sounded really cheesy, but I feel like it’s true! It took me a long time to accept that I could identify as Asian Pacific American and that I wasn’t erasing my mixed identity. I can be APA and I can be Irish American and I can be mixed. Because for me, being APA means that I can relate to the stories of other APAs and recognize the diversity of all the deep complex histories and narratives that have shaped so many of our experiences. Being APA represents hxstory and struggle, but most of all it represents community. And that’s what I love about it so much…

Read the entire interview here.

Seeking Multiracial Americans or Brazilian Residing in the United States for Research Study

Ariane Y. Kreidl, Student ETS Academic Advisor; USC TRiO; Educational Talent Search
Business Administration 19’
USC Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

My name is Ariane Kreidl and I am research scholar at the University of Southern California (USC). I am seeking participants for a research study about race. This research aims to understand racial norms through a comparative analysis of biracial/multiracial Americans and Brazilians individuals living in the United States.

Eligibility criteria. Participants must be one of the following:

• Biracial/multiracial Americans (i.e., individuals who have mixed ancestry of two-or-more races)
• Brazilians living in the United States for at least three (3) years.

There are two (2) ways to participate:

1. Online Survey (Qualtrics)^a: Closed-ended questions related to the research topic. The estimated response time is approximately 20 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to enter a drawing to win a $50 Amazon/Visa Gift Card.
2. Interview in-person or via Skype^b: Open-ended questions related to the research topic. Interview will last between 30-75 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to enter a drawing to win a $100 Amazon/Visa Gift Card! (This interview block is limited to only 20 participants).

Participation is completely anonymous.

Thank you for considering this research invitation.

^aIf you are interested, please click on the link for the survey: Qualitrics.Survey.Akreidl.
^bIf you are interested, please click on the following link to select a date and time: Research.Interview.Appt.Slots.

Reflections on the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (CMRS) 2017

Multiracial Media: Voice of the Multiracial Community
2017-03-22

Thomas Lopez, President
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)

Back in February 2015 I met with Duncan Williams, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Sonia Smith-Kang and Shannon Haugh over Vietnamese fusion food in Atwater Village to kick-off the site planning meeting for the Critical Mixed Race Studies 2016 conference to be held at the University of Southern California (USC). It occurred to me then that fusion food gets its name from the people eating it as much as what is on the menu. As the President of Multiracial Americans of Southern California, I knew my involvement would be more oversight than direct action since seeing to the management of MASC keeps me busy enough. Still, I sat-in in part because I needed to know in what direction we were moving and also in-part for the good eats.

Thomas Lopez with Maria P. P. Root

We quickly realized this conference would be unlike any of the ones before. For starters, one of the first things we did was review dates in the Fall to hold the conference to maintain the biannual schedule set by the initial organizers. It soon occurred to us that many dates were unavailable due to USC’s football schedule. For those that don’t know, you don’t want to be anywhere near USC on a game day, unless you’re going to the game. As we started striking out dates due to conflicts we eventually settled on a shift of the conference to the Spring and thus was born the new Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference of 2017…

Read the entire article here.