Mixed Race Studies

Hollins University Commencement

2010-05-22 through 2010-05-23
Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia

Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry and a graduate of Hollins University’s master of arts program in English and creative writing, will be the guest speaker at Hollins’ 168th Commencement Exercises, which will be held on Sunday, May 23, 2010, at 10 a.m. on the university’s historic Front Quadrangle.

Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, Mississippi, studied at Hollins in 1990 and 1991 and is now professor of English and the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University at Atlanta. She received the Pulitzer for her most recent collection of poetry, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), which blends her reflections on growing up as the daughter of a biracial couple in the Deep South with largely forgotten Southern history dating back to the Civil War…

For more information, click here.

Biracial Asian Americans and Mental Health

University of California, Davis
News and Information
2008-08-10

A new study of Chinese-Caucasian, Filipino-Caucasian, Japanese-Caucasian and Vietnamese-Caucasian individuals concludes that biracial Asian Americans are twice as likely as monoracial Asian Americans to be diagnosed with a psychological disorder.

The study by researchers at the Asian American Center on Disparities Research at the University of California, Davis, was reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Boston.

“Up to 2.4 percent of the U.S. population self-identifies as mixed race, and most of these individuals describe themselves as biracial,” said Nolan Zane, a professor of psychology and Asian American studies at UC Davis. “We cannot underestimate the importance of understanding the social, psychological and experiential differences that may increase the likelihood of psychological disorders among this fast-growing segment of the population.”…

Read the entire article here.

ENGL S-88 Study Abroad in Venice, Italy: Interracial Literature (32137)

Harvard Summer Program in Venice, Italy: Liberal arts studies in Italy’s city of canals
2010-06-03 through 2010-07-30
Mondays, Wednesdays, 10:00-12:30 CEST (Local Time)
(4 credits: UN, GR) Limited enrollment

Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English and African-American Studies
Harvard University

This course examines a wide variety of literary texts on black-white couples, interracial families, and biracial identity, from classical antiquity to the present. Works studied include romances, novellas, plays, novels, short stories, poems, and nonfiction, as well as some films and examples from the visual arts. Topics for discussion range from interracial genealogies to racial “passing,” from representations of racial difference to alternative plot resolutions, and from religious and political to legal and scientific contexts for the changing understanding of race. Focus is on the European tradition and the Harlem Renaissance.

Prerequisites: none.

For more information, click here.