Mixed Race Studies

“IndiVisible” Discusses African–Native American Lives

Newsdsesk: Newsroom of the Smithsonian Institution
2012-01-06

“IndiVisible: African–Native American Lives in the Americas,” a 20-panel display that outlines the seldom-viewed history and complex lives of people of dual African American and Native American ancestry, will open at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, Thursday, Feb. 9. The exhibit will be on view through Friday, Aug. 31, in the museum’s photo corridor gallery.

“Indivisible” addresses the racially motivated laws that have been forced on Native, African American and mixed-heritage peoples. Since pre-colonial times, Native and African American peoples have built strong communities through intermarriage, unified efforts to preserve their land and taking part in creative resistance. Over time, these communities developed constructive survival strategies, and several have regained economic sustainability through gaming in the 1980s. The daily cultural practices that define the African–Native American experience through food, language, writing, music, dance and the visual arts, will also be highlighted in the exhibition…

Read the entire article here.

Escaping to Destinations South: The Underground Railroad, Cultural Identity, and Freedom Along the Southern Borderlands

National Park Service
Network to Freedom
2012-06-20 through 2012-06-24
St. Augustine, Florida

The Network to Freedom has joined with local partners to present an annual UGRR [Underground Railroad] conference beginning in 2007. These conferences bring together a mix of grass roots researchers, community advocates, site stewards, government officials, and scholars to explore the history of the Underground Railroad. Rotated to different parts of the country, the conferences highlight the unique history of various regions along with new research.

The 2012 Conference theme is the resistance to slavery through escape and flight to and from the South, including through international flight, from the 16th century to the end of the Civil War. Traditional views of the Underground Railroad focus on Northern destinations of freedom seekers, with symbols such as the North Star, Canada, and the Ohio River (the River Jordan) constructed as the primary beacons of freedom. This conception reduces the complexity of the Underground Railroad by ignoring the many freedom seekers that sought to obtain their freedom in southern destinations.

Likewise, borders and the movement across them by southern freedom seekers are also very crucial to our understanding of the complexities of the Underground Railroad. Freedom seekers often sought out political and geographical borderlands, as crossing these locations usually represented the divide between slavery and freedom. To this end, the conference will explore how southern freedom seekers seized opportunities to escape slavery into Spanish Florida and the Seminole Nation, to the Caribbean Islands, and into the western borderlands of Indian Territory, Texas, and Mexico.

Escape from enslavement was not just about physical freedom, but also about the search for cultural autonomy. The conference will explore the transformation and creation of new cultural identities among southern freedom seekers that occurred as a result of their journeys to freedom, such as the dispersal of Gullah Geechee culture and the formation of Black Seminole cultural identity.

The 2012 Conference will include participation by independent and academic scholars at all levels, educators, community activists, public historians and preservationists, and multi-media and performance artists. The conference seeks to create a cultural, historical, and interpretive exchange between domestic and international descendent communities of southern freedom seekers.

Gullah Geechee and Black Seminole descendants are particularly welcome at the conference.

For more information, click here.  Call for papers information (Deadline 2012-01-15) is here.

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies: Proposal Deadline

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies
2012-03-16 throught 2012-03-17
University of California, Berkeley

Co-Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and Ethnic Studies Department

Call for Proposals – Deadline: 2012-01-15

In traditional Ethnic Studies, mixed race scholarship has often been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out. In order to allow for a collaborative environment given the need for more critical scholarship on the experiences of mixed race people, in Fall 2009, a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley formed the inter-disciplinary working group at the Center for Race & Gender, Transnational Mixed Asians In-Between Spaces (TMABS). The goal of the working group is to to create a safe space for scholars to discuss issues of mixed race identity and also to provide a venue for those doing work in this area to present developing ideas and projects. Furthermore, the working group seeks to expand the notion of mixed race to include other factors such as culture and space. Overall, it is our intent to encourage and promote research on mixed race/culture in Ethnic Studies and bring together scholarship from multiple disciplines to collaborate on future research areas.
 
The co-founders of TMABS are: Kevin Escudero, Joina Hsiao, Ariko Ikehara and Julie Thi Underhill, doctoral students in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.
 
In Spring 2012, we will host our inaugural conference entitled, “Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies.” The conference will take place March 16-17th at the UC Berkeley campus and will include panels, film screenings, poetry performances and an art exhibit. We are currently seeking submissions that are of any of the following genres: academic papers, art work, poetry and/or film and that address the theme of emerging and future discourses in mixed race studies…

For more information, click here.

Multiracial Identity: New Models and Frameworks for Describing and Understanding the Experience of Race and Identity

National Conference on Race & Ethnicity (NCORE) 2012
New York, New York
2012-05-29 through 2012-06-02
Date & Time To Be Determined

Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, Ed.D, Consultant in Organizational Development and Social Justice Education

For two decades, research on Multiracial people has challenged, advanced, and re-framed how we view race and identity in the United States.  The impact of foundational, as well as new models of Multiracial identity is evident in the content of emerging perspectives on social identity, including Intersectionality. This highly interactive session includes a brief review of ways Multiracial identity has been framed over the past 20 years, including key issues that both support and challenge traditional theories of racial identity development.  A new model of multiracial identity that incorporates aspects of intersectionality is presented and demonstrated as a learning and programming tool.  Interactive discussion allows participants to examine questions often raised by the topic of Multiracial identity on campus, such as: to what extent is racial identity chosen as opposed to assigned? Do racial groups embody aspects of culture, and if so, what is Multiracial culture? To what extent should institutional policies and practices change to accommodate Multiracial people? and What interventions and programs have been successful in meeting the needs of Multiracial students, and what can we learn from our mistakes?

For more information, click here.

AAS 310: Mixed Race And The Media

University of Texas, Austin
Center for Asian American Studies
Spring 2012

Alexander Cho, Assistant Instructor

What is “race,” and what does it mean to be “mixed”? How is mass media responsible for channeling fears, desires, and anxieties about “mixed” bodies? Why are “mixed race” bodies suddenly desirable and chic? Can one exist in two or more categories at the same time? How do people think of “mixedness” in the U.S., and how is it different in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Brazil? Why do people care so much? Why do categories matter? Isn’t everyone “mixed” somehow? Where do you fit in?
 
This course will give students the tools to critically respond to these questions via a comparative, historically situated study of the representation of “mixed-race” people in popular media. Major attention will be paid to special concerns for Asian American populations; it includes substantial attention to African American and Latino populations. Chiefly U.S.-centered, but with a large transnational comparative component analyzing “mixed” racial formation in: North America, Latin America, Caribbean, Brazil.

(1)ne Drop: 2012 Tour

(1)ne Drop
National Campus Tour
Fall 2011

In an effort to provide audiences the opportunity to more deeply engage the issues raised by the project, the (1)ne Drop project is going on tour. The producers invite colleges and universities across the country to host a (1)ne Drop exhibit. Each exhibition will be accompanied by a multi-media lecture on skin color politics and Black racial identity by Dr. Yaba Blay, (1)ne Drop Author and Producer…

Topics include:

• “One-Drop: Fact? Fiction? or Fate?”
• “Not Black Enough: The “Other” African American Experience”
• “¿Black?: The Latin American and Caribbean Experience”
• “Light Skin + Long Hair: Challenges to Sistahood”

For more information, click here.

Generation, Degeneration, Miscegenation

Intstitute for Research on Women
IRW Distinguished Lecture Series 2011-12: (De)Generations: Reimagining Communities
Rutgers University
Thursday, 2012-04-12
(16:00 EDT reception; 16:30 EDT lecture)

César Braga-Pinto, Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies
Northwestern University

Focusing on the cases of Brazil and the U.S., this presentation proposes to articulate the role played by gender representations in debates around miscegenation in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Generation, understood in its vertical, genealogical, reproductive aspect is one of the most contested issues in the late 19th century both in Brazil and the U.S., and it is always haunted by miscegenation and the threat of degeneration. This paper aims to understand how horizontal calls for the formation of a new generation (in the sense of brotherhood, nationality, contemporaneity and intellectual-literary communities) in the beginning of the 20th century struggles to resolve the pessimism associated with mixed-race subjects and communities.

For more information, click here.

Racial Socialization, Identity, and Adjustment in Black and Biracial Youth

National Council on Family Relations
73rd NCFR Annual Conference (“Families and the Shifting Economy”)
Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, Florida
2011-11-16 through 2011-11-19

Session ID# 330
2011-11-08, 15:30-17:30 EST (Local Time)

Chair: Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor, Human Development & Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford

Ethnic Identity Development and its Association With Behavioral Functioning During Early Childhood

Catherine Anicama
Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Inst for Prevension Sci)
Langone Medical Center
New York University

Esther J. Calzada, Assistant Professor
Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Inst for Prevension Sci) and Psychiatry
Langone Medical Center
New York University

An Examination of Biracial Identity Development Using a Qualitative Research Design

Shannon Bert, Professor of Human Relations
University of Oklahoma

Racial Socialization, Identification, and Black-White Biracial Children’s Behavior Trajectories

Annamaria Csizmadia

This symposium examines ethnic identity, socialization, and adjustment among Black and part-Black youth. The first paper investigates ethnic identity, socialization, and behavior problems among Black and Afro-Caribbean elementary-age children. Using a cross-sectional qualitative design, the second paper investigates personal and contextual predictors of Black-White biracial youth’s biracial identity development. The third paper uses growth modeling to study racial identification, cultural socialization, racial discussions, and Black-White children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior trajectories K through 5th grade. Together these papers highlight the dynamic interplay between ethno-racial identity, socialization practices, and adjustment in mono-and multiracial Black youth between the elementary and adult years.

For more information, click here.

Critical Mixed Race Conference 2012: Call for Papers

Critical Mixed Race Conference 2012
“What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”
2012-11-01 throuth 2012-11-04
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Click here for this announcement in PDF format.

Conference Description: What is Critical Mixed Race Studies? will be hosted at DePaul University in Chicago, November 1-4, 2012. The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have fostered different approaches to the field, the 2012 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”

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 areas as related to Critical Mixed Race Studies:

To submit a proposal or for more information, please visit: http://las.depaul.edu/cmrs

Deadline for all proposals: December 15th, 2011.
Selections will be finalized by March 1, 2012.

All queries should be directed to cmrs@depaul.edu.

Long Way Home: The Loving Story

Augusta Films
2010

Director and Producer: Nancy Buirski
Producer and Editor: Elisabeth Haviland James

Richard and Mildred Loving, Circa 1967

This documentary feature film, currently in production, tells the dramatic story of Mildred and Richard Loving, a black and Cherokee woman married to a white man (against the law in 1958-Virginia) and of their famous anti-miscegenation case argued in the Supreme Court in 1967. Thrown into rat-infested jails and exiled from their hometown for 25 years, the Lovings fought back and changed history. Using rare archival footage, home movies, photographs, interviews with witnesses, friends and family, and poetic visual and narrative sequences, the documentary will build a complex portrait of the couple at the heart of marriage equality in this country. It will also do something rare in storytelling—look at the story itself as it has mutated over the years, with the understanding that history is only as reliable as those who tell it.

Both of the attorneys, Bernie Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, who represented Mildred and Richard Loving in the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia have agreed to participate in the project as consultants and as on-camera interviews.  In addition, Peggy Loving Fortune and Sidney Jeter Loving, the surviving children of Mildred and Richard have agreed to be on-camera participants. This is notable because, like their mother, they have guarded their privacy and avoided media attention for most of their lives.

For more information, click here. To donate to the project, click here.