Mixed Race Studies

ASTD 693 – Racial Crossings

Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri
Fall 2014

Heidi Ardizzone, Associate Professor of American Studies

This course examines race in American history and culture primarily through the lens of racial ambiguities, intersections, and intimacies. With attention to major theoretical frameworks for interpreting racial identity and structures, we examine historical and contemporary experiences of race, focusing primarily but not exclusively on black-white contexts. Topics covered include interracial relationships, people of mixed ancestry, and shifting or ambiguous racial identities.

ASTD 393-03 – Mixed Race America

Saint Louis University
Fall 2012

Heidi Ardizzone, Assistant Professor of American Studies 

Despite popular images of American as a “melting” both of races and ethnicities, our institutions, values, and practices have often tried to create or maintain spatial and social distance between groups defined as racially different. This course will explore that ways in which Americans have transgressed those boundaries or found other ways of interacting across cultural lines, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will examine popular cultural perceptions of people of mixed ancestry, their social experiences, the development of various mixed-ancestry communities, and historical attempts to limit interracial socializing, relationships, and marriage. These issues were and are deeply embedded in debates over the meaning of race, gender expectations and ideas about sex and sexuality. We will also pay close attention to how minority communities have understood people of mixed ancestry in the United States, and how mixed-race identities intersect with African American, Native American, Asian, White, and Latino identities.

View the Syllabus here.

Group provides space for ‘racial Hybrids’

The University News
A Student Voice of Saint Louis University Since 1921
2011-04-14

Sean Worley

Black Student Alliance, Filipino Student Association, Indian Student Association and the list of groups oriented around race goes on. Although these student groups have a noticeable presence on campus, for some students, they just are not enough.
 
“I constantly feel different,” freshman Rebecca Glasgow said. “I relate to things but I always feel different.”
 
Glasgow identifies as an Arab-American with her father being from the United States and her mother from Syria, she often wonders where her chartered student organization is on campus.
 
Hybrid Identities is such a student organization for students who identify with no one particular race. In other words they are mixed race, or hybrid.
 
This CSO is currently in its probationary status but is already starting to gain interest and support…

Read the entire article here.

Minstrel passing: Citizenship, race change, and motherhood in 1850s America

Saint Louis University
2009
116 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3383188
ISBN: 9781109452945

Roshaunda D. Cade, Writing Coordinator, Academic Resource Center
Webster University, St. Louis, Missouri

A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Saint Louis University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the egree of Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation explores how mixed race slave mothers in American literature of the mid-Nineteenth Century combine the performances of blackface minstrelsy and racial passing in order to perform minstrel passing and access the freedoms of citizenship. Minstrel passing seeks to gain the advantages of the other through performances of deception, and it gains more liberties for the performer than either passing or minstrelsy do alone. While minstrel passing does not grant freedom, it grants the freedom to behave like and be treated as a citizen. During this era, motherhood defined female citizenship. But instead of solely resigning women to the domestic sphere, motherhood emboldens women to try things they have never done before. For these slave women, motherhood pushes them to seek the benefits of citizenship.

I argue that in the following the texts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Harriet Beecher Stowe; Clotel (1853), William Wells Brown; The Bondwoman’s Narrative (2002), Hannah Crafts; Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Mark Twain, these bids for citizenship happen largely through the acts of blackface minstrelsy, racial passing, and minstrel passing. Because these performances privilege self-definition, they become tools in the feminist arsenal of autonomy and create space for feminist citizenship. Each of these novels deals with mixed race slave mothers minstrel passing their way into freedom. Additionally, the complexity of the minstrel passing situations intensifies in each novel, revealing the complicated nature of the mid-Nineteenth Century moment.

The mid-century collision of increasingly confusing racial definitions, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, the emergence of blackface minstrelsy as a national form of entertainment, and the Women’s Rights Movement created a unique atmosphere for American women, black and white. To that end, the 1850s offered a variety of ways for women to accommodate citizenship. I maintain that this era created a space for mixed race slave mothers to perform racial deception, in order to exercise autonomy and define their own spheres, and find the freedom to enjoy the privileges of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness inherent in U.S. citizenship.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: CREATING CITIZENSHIP IN 1850s AMERICA
• CHAPTER 2: CREATING CITIZENSHIP THROUGH MOTHERHOOD, MINSTRELSY, AND PASSING IN HARRIET BEECHER STOWE’S UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
  • Introduction
  • Stowe’s Search for Mother
  • Accidental Feminism
  • Citizenship
  • Eliza, George, and Harry: Minstrel Trio
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER 3: SECURING LIBERTY AND CITIZENSHIP THROUGH PASSING AND MINSTRELSY IN WILLIAM WELLS BROWN’S CLOTEL
  • Introduction
  • Growing up with Currer
  • Althesa’s Attempts at American Liberty
  • Clotel’s Migration from Black Female Slave to Free White Man
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER 4: MOTHERHOOD AND DECEPTION AS FREEDOM IN THE BONDWOMAN’S NARRATIVE BY HANNAH CRAFTS
  • Introduction
  • Searching for Mother
  • White Womanhood
  • Othermothering
  • Little Orphan Hannah
  • Conclusion; or, White Womanhood Revisited
• CHAPTER 5: MULATTA MAMA PERFORMING PASSING AND MIMICKING MINSTRELSY IN MARK TWAIN’S PUDD’NHEAD WILSON
  • Introduction
  • Mark Twain and Motherhood
  • Privilege, Citizenship, and Race
  • Roxy as Racial Passer
  • Roxy as Blackface Minstrel
  • Conclusion
• CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: MINSTREL PASSING INTO AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP
• Works Cited
• Vita Auctoris

Purchase the dissertation here.