Mixed Race Studies

In Plain Sight: Changing Representations of “Biracial” People in Film 1903-2015

Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
December 2016
247 pages

Charles Lawrence Gray

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Educational Policy and Leadership)

Rooted in slavery, the United States in both law and custom has a long history of adhering to the one drop rule–the stipulation that any amount of African ancestry constitutes an individual as black. Given this history, decidedly mixed race people have been subjected to a number of degrading stereotypes. In examining the three broad themes of the tragic mulatto, racial passing, and racelessness in cinema, this dissertation asks to what extent film representations of mixed race characters have had the capacity to educate audiences beyond stereotypes. Although a number of film scholars and critics have analyzed mixed race characters in American cinema, there is no treatment spanning the last century that comprehensively analyzes each film’s capacity to diminish racism.

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The mulatta text and the muted voice in “Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon”: Revising the genre of the slave narrative

Marquette University
August 1995
202 pages

Rebecca Anne Ferguson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English

From the earliest critical discussion of the slave narrative genre in Rev. Ephraim Peabody’s review essay of 1849 through the most recent scholarly analyses, unexamined assumptions have been advanced about the conventions, including structure, language, theme, and plot, which determine the inclusion of those slave narratives identified as generic texts. The 1988 publication of the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, under the editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., includes several formerly unavailable slave narratives which constitute a new subgenre I am here defining for the first time as “mulatta texts.” Mulatta texts expose, in their structuring between unequal voices, the negotiations necessary in slavery, an institution defined as the “paradox of formal distance and physical intimacy” by historian C. Vann Woodward. I analyze the textual control and moral agenda that the named author, northern abolitionist Rev. Hiram Mattison, maintained over one exemplary mulatta text in the Schomburg Library, Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, but I also attend carefully to the complex and “muted voice” (to borrow John Sekora’s term) of Louisa Picquet as she advances very different purposes. Determined to gain the financial contributions necessary to purchase the freedom of her mother and brother, Picquet cooperates with her interrogator even as she resists his familiar gaze and asserts her identity as a black woman in her own community. Although the last half of the text seems to erase Picquet, careful analyses of Louisa Picquet and other mulatta texts supports Toni Morrison’s project, as limned in Playing in the Dark, to re-examine the entire canon of American literature for the presences of “Africanisms.” Expanded understandings of the complexities of voice in mulatta narratives will allow us to respond to the voices of former slaves in other mulatta texts, narratives neither written nor controlled by the African Americans but nonetheless shaped by their powers of articulation and resistance.

Table of Contents

• I. A “Paradox of Formal Distance and Physical Intimacy”: Generic Criticism and the Mixed Nature of the Slave Narratives
• II. No Longer at the Margin: Mulatta Texts in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers
• III. Assessing the Participation of Rev. Hiram Mattison in the Mulatta Text, Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon
• IV. “Multiple Forms of Resistance”: A Narrative of Louisa Picquet’s Voice
• V. The Competing Narrative Strategies in the Mulatta Text of Louisa Picquet
• Endnotes

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Racial Identity Development and Psychological Adjustment in Biracial Individuals of Minority/Minority Racial Group Descent

Marquette University
Spring 2011

Kizzie Paule Walker

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirments for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Based on the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism and race as a social construct, individuals with biological parents racially distinct from each other have biracial identity options (i.e., Singular, Border, Protean, and Transcendent) (e.g., Rockquemore and Brunsma, 2002). The purpose of the current study was to examine factors that influenced biracial individuals’ level of racial/ethnic identity development and the impact on biracial identity and psychological adjustment (i.e., self-esteem and psychological well-being). A total of 199 biracial individuals, who ranged in age from 18 to 55 years, completed an online survey that measured factors such as the rule of hypodescent (i.e., one-drop rule), physical appearance, self-monitoring, and exposure to multicultural experiences. Although the one-drop rule was not a significant predictor of biracial identity options, there were other significant findings within this population. Physical resemblance to two or more racial groups and exposure to multicultural experiences predicted biracial individuals’ identification with a Border or Protean identity. Second, this study found that a high level of exposure to multicultural experiences best predicted a high level of ethnic identity development and positive interactions with other racial groups. Lastly, the current study found that the previously mentioned factors also contributed to biracial individuals’ psychological adjustment (i.e., self-esteem and psychological well-being). Limitations of the current study and recommendations for future research with this population were also discussed.

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