"Mixed-Race in the Age of Obama"
March 5, 2010
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
University of Chicago
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago invites paper proposals for a daylong conference to be held on campus on March 5, 2010. "Mixed-Race in the Age of Obama" seeks to intervene in the discursive, material, and ideological debates involving mixed-race people nationally and internationally, examining historical, sociological, literary, legal, and other (inter)disciplinary representations of the lived experience of mixed-race people.
While often the interrogation into mixed-race assumes a Black-White dichotomy in the U.S., as in the case of our first mixed-race president, looking beyond the veil yields much more provocative and historically significant intersections of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and empire, amongst other formations. For example, how has President Obama's African, Indonesian, Hawai'ian and Kansan upbringing informed his identity, his "brand," and perhaps, his politics? Given the recent New York Times query into First Lady Michelle Obama's mixed-race roots, are we, as a 21st-century society, finally coming to grips with a subject that authors like Charles Chesnutt, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, and Jean Toomer explored in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries? Certainly American imperial wars have borne the unintended consequences of miscegenation, from the number of mixed-race children either left behind and neglected in war zones, like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines, or taken by soldier-fathers to the U.S. (à la Miss Saigon's hackneyed Asian woman's bodily sacrifice for the well-being of the normative white couple and the health of the national body). Absorption of mixed-race people into American culture and society did not gain significant purchase among eugenicists of the U.S. imperial period in the way that "half-castes" in the British Colonies were envisioned. Why? Why not? Even the "little brown brother" in the Philippines knew enough that Hispanicized, mixed-race elites should collude with American counterparts to keep control of the "inferior," indigenous, "full-blooded," and darker peoples of the new U.S. colony. The Tagalog term mestiso shares its cognate in Spanish (mestizo) for an historical, strategic, and ultimately hegemonic reason: the Spanish Empire's voyages into Asia and Latin America were not simply exercises in navigational curiosity.
This conference will therefore explore new genealogies and approaches to the study of mixed-race people, multiracialism, and the mythology of the purity of any putatively monolithic "race." What historical events and movements have affected the positionality and discourse of mixed-race peoples? Is it important or unimportant to acknowledge the role institutions, like universities, census bureaus, the courts, and Madison Avenue agencies, play in the understanding, representation, and reception of mixed-race peoples? What is significant about President Obama's claim to Blackness despite his much heralded mixed-race background and upbringing? Do the stakes in the debates surrounding mixed-race categories and peoples, and related problematic representations of people of color in general, shift as the people themselves ascend to the highest echelons of power, knowledge production, and entertainment culture?
Conference paper proposals are welcome on the following themes but are not limited to: identity politics and the politics of mixed-race peoples, nationally and globally; post-racial discourses and ideologies; intersecting "zones" of multiracialism, gender, and multisexuality; mixed-race narratives or histories involving the "one-drop rule" or blood "quantum"; new studies, genealogies, and/or historiographies of mixed-race peoples; the politics of transgressions or non-normative politics; on-the-ground racial politics surrounding mixed-race peoples and "authenticity" within certain racialized groups.
Papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in an academic journal. All expenses – transport and housing – will be provided for persons chosen to present.
Paper proposals should not be more than two single-spaced pages and must be accompanied by a short, two-page résumé. A copy of these materials should be sent electronically by January 25, 2010 to each of the following: Ramón A. Gutiérrez (rgutierrez@uchicago.edu), Matthew M. Briones (brio@uchicago.edu).
For additional information on the conference or the Center, please contact Prof. Ramón A. Gutiérrez, Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, University of Chicago, at 773-702-8063 or rgutierrez@uchicago.edu.
