Mixed Race Studies

Virginia Officials, Hidden Figures Author Join NASA in Honoring Legacy of Famed Mathematician; Live on NASA Television

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NASA Langley
Media Advisory M17-105

Karen Northon
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
202-358-1540

Mike Finneran
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia
757-864-6110

2017-09-07

The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Credits: NASA

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and author Margot Lee Shetterly are among the dignitaries honoring Katherine Johnson, former NASA employee and central character of the book and movie Hidden Figures, at 1 p.m. [EDT] Sept. 22 at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

They will join Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck and Langley Center Director David Bowles in cutting the ribbon to officially open the center’s new Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility, a state-of-the-art lab for innovative research and development supporting NASA’s exploration missions.

The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Media wishing to attend must contact Michael Finneran of the Langley communications office at 757-864-6110 or michael.p.finneran@nasa.gov.

Johnson, 99, will attend and participate in photo opportunities, but will not be available for interviews. A prerecorded message from her will be aired during the ceremony and a statement will be read.

Johnson was a “human computer” at Langley who calculated trajectories for America’s first spaceflights in the 1960s. The retired mathematician was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2015. Her contributions and those of other NASA African-American human computers are chronicled in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures, based on Lee-Shetterly’s book of the same name. She worked at Langley from 1953 until she retired in 1986.

For more about Johnson, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography

The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility (CRF) is a $23-million, 37,000-square-foot, energy efficient structure that consolidates five Langley data centers and more than 30 server rooms. The facility will enhance NASA’s efforts in modeling and simulation, big data, and analysis. Much of the work now done by wind tunnels eventually will be performed by computers like those at the CRF.

For more information about Langley Research Center, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/langley

Thomas and Sally

Marin Theater Company
Mill Valley, California
September 28-October 22 (2017) | World Premiere

By Thomas Bradshaw

An explosive world premiere by a 2017 PEN Award winner, Thomas and Sally gets up close and personal with founding father Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who mothered six of his children. Playwright Thomas Bradshaw takes us behind the scenes—and into the beds—of American history with the Hemings-Jeffersons and the rock stars of the Revolution: Ben Franklin, John & Abigail Adams & the Marquis de Lafayette!

Mr. Bradshaw’s writing has been influenced by the research of many historical experts on the Jefferson and Hemings families, but the world of this play is completely his own:

“Thomas and Sally is a work of historical fiction. You may recognize many of the names in this play, but others are pure invention. History is highly malleable and subject to interpretation. This is my attempt to explore the essence of these characters and the world they lived in. This is a play, and I am playing with history. I hope you enjoy.”

Thomas Bradshaw’s plays have been produced at regional theaters in NYC as well as in Europe. He is currently working on commissions from the Goodman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the Foundry Theatre, as well as developing a TV series for HARPO and HBO. He is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2010 Prince Charitable Trust Prize, the 2012 Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and this year’s PEN award for an Emerging American playwright.

For more information, click here.

An Octoroon

Woolly Mammoth Theater
641 D Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
Telephone: 202-393-3939

2017-07-17 through 2017-08-06

By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Nataki Garrett

Last year’s most talked-about, most unforgettable production is returning to Woolly for a limited three-week run: An Octoroon by new MacArthur “Genius Grant”-winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins!

A plantation on the brink of foreclosure. A young gentleman falling for the part-black daughter of the estate’s owner. An evil swindler plotting to buy her for himself. Meanwhile, the slaves are trying to keep things drama-free, because everybody else is acting crazy.

An Octoroon, Jacobs-Jenkins’ Obie-winning riff on a 19th century melodrama that helped shape the debate around the abolition of slavery, is an incendiary adaptation. Part period satire, part meta-theatrical middle finger, it’s a provocative challenge to the racial pigeonholing of 1859—and of today.

Featuring company members Shannon Dorsey, Jon Hudson Odom, and Erika Rose

Two and a half hours, with one intermission

For more information, click here.

Twin Cities Artists And Organizers Host Conference On Mixed Race Identity

Press Release
For Immediate Release: June 26, 2016

Twin Cities Artists And Organizers Host Conference On Mixed Race Identity
Midwest Mixed Conference
Amherst H. Wilder Foundation
St. Paul, Minnesota
August 4-6, 2017

Minneapolis, MN – What began as a space for community dialogues about mixed race identities and experiences, has grown into a unique conference centered around art, community, and courageous conversation. From August 4th to 6th, 2017, artists and community organizers from the Twin Cities will host the first MidWest Mixed Conference, to explore themes connected to multiracial identities with art at the center. According to conference organizers “In a nation and a world with a growing number of people who identify as mixed race, we see the urgency of shining light on the diverse experiences of mixed people, youth, and families, as well as putting forward stories that can unite us, and deepen our analysis of racial issues.”

The conference will provide spaces to explore mixed and multiracial experiences through art, activities, presentations, and conversations. The call is currently open for conference presenters and registration will open at the end of June. In addition to conference presenters, featured speakers include Rebecca Polston and Ricardo Levins Morales. The conference will also include a screening of Mixed Match, an acclaimed animated film about mixed race blood cancer patients navigating ancestry and genetics as they search for bone marrow donors.

While many conversations and events around mixed and multiracial experiences happen in East Coast and West Coast cities, little attention has been paid to the unique experiences and histories of multiracial people and/or transracial adoptees across the Midwest. Multiracial individuals, transracial adoptees, and youth are all welcome.

ABOUT MIDWEST MIXED | As members of communities that are deeply polarized around race and other measures of identity, the goal of MWM is not to divide, but to provide safer spaces to move deeply into our authentic selves, both during and beyond the conference. We are a group of parents, youth, artists, teachers, community organizers, and friends all dedicated to courageous conversations. After two years of hosting a space known as “The Mixed Dialogues”, members of the group formed a committee to plan the first MidWest Mixed Conference, in hopes of reaching more people.

View the Press Kit here.

Media Contacts

Alissa Paris | MidWest Mixed, Co-founder
Lola Osunkoya | MMW Conference Organizer

Website | midwestmixed.com
E-Mail | midwestmixedconference@gmail.com

Afro-Latino Fest NYC 2017-A Tribute to Women of the Diaspora

Afro-Latino Festival of New York
Brooklyn & Harlem
New York, New York
Friday, 2017-07-07, 19:00 through Sunday, 2017-07-09, 04:00 EDT (Local Time)

The Afrolatino Festival NYC enters its 5th year anniversary in 2017 with a Tribute to women of the diaspora. We just successfully completed a community-powered round of crowdfunding via Kickstarter.

Thanks to all who have supported and will support over the coming months.

For more information, click here.

Psychophysiological Responses to Racial Passing Behavior

2017 Rogers Science Research Brown Bag Presentations
Olin 301
Lewis & Clark College
0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road
Portland, Oregon 97219 USA
Telephone: 503-768-7000
Tuesday, 2017-06-27, 12:00-13:15 PDT (Local Time)

Student presenters: Madison Kleiner and Mikayla Parsons
Faculty collaborator: Diana Leonard, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Brown Bags
Students discuss their research projects during a series of brown-bag talks on Tuesdays in June and July. Each presentation is 15 minutes; there are generally 3-4 talks per session. For more information about projects see project descriptions.

• Tuesdays 12:00-13:15, in Olin 301 unless otherwise noted
• Presentations are free and open to the public
• Dessert provided

Racial passing–presenting oneself as a race other than one’s own–is often viewed negatively (Dawkins, 2012), but the reason is unclear. Thus far, our lab has shown that passing as a member of a lower status racial group (i.e., as Black) is more morally condemned than the reverse (i.e., passing as White). We have also demonstrated that people who endorse Colorblind ideology judge racial passing more harshly, perhaps because it threatens their core beliefs. In our next step, we will measure stress and cognitive depletion to examine why people find racial passing to be morally condemnable under these circumstances.

For more information, click here.

The “Other” Box: A Conversation on Mixed America

Stella Adler Studio of Acting and Radical Evolution
Studio G
31 West 27th Street, Floor 2
New York, New York 10001
Monday, 2017-06-05, 19:00-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

With Lawrence-Mihn Bùi Davis and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. Jami Floyd, legal analyst, local host of WNYC’s “All Things Considered,” and a New York City native who is herself multiracial, will serve as moderator for the discussion.

For more information, click here.

Mixed Art Conference

Toronto Central Grosvenor St. YMCA Centre
20 Grosvenor Street
Toronto, ON M4Y 2V5, Canada
2017-06-03

“The aim of this multidisciplinary biennial art conference is to co-create an inclusive dialogue about racialized mixed identities and lived realities through an intersectional lens.”

For more information, click here.

SISS 2017: Race as Kink: Reading Transracial Fetishism – Public Lecture by Dr. Trish Salah

Centre for Feminist Research at York University
Keele Campus
DB0014 (Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Building, formerly Technology Enhanced Learning [TEL] Building)
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Telephone: 416-736-2100
Tuesday, 2017-06-06, 10:00-11:30 EDT (Local Time)

Dr. Trish Salah, Assistant Professor
Department of Gender Studies
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Introduced by Dr. John Greyson

In what sense might we speak or think about race as libidinally charged? How do we understand racial identity as erotically invested and in what ways do we see object choice as racially inflected? To what extent are such libidinal economies of identity formation and object choice both ubiquitously alluded to and routinely disavowed? And what are the circumstances under which they present themselves as an occasion for scandal, crisis and conflict?

Drawing upon Freud’s discussion of the place of disavowal in the constitution of desire, this talk is an attempt to think about the persistence, and affective charge, with which analogies between transgender identities and forms of racial passing or cross-identification, increasingly named as “transracialism,” are made.

Dr. Trish Salah is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University and the author of two poetry collections, the Lambda award-winning Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1…

For more information, click here.

Racism, Stigma and Self-Discovery: the ‘Brown Babies’ of World War II

Lucy Bland, Professor of Social and Cultural History
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street
Room B34
London WC1E 7HX
United Kingdom
Wednesday, 2017-06-07, 18:00–21:00 BST (Local Time)

Of the 3 million US serviceman who passed through Britain during World War 11, up to 10% were African-American. Many of these black GIs had relationships with local women, resulting in the birth of an estimated 2,000 mixed-race babies. These children were subjected both to the stigma of illegitimacy (for the US army forbade marriage between black GIs and white British women) and racism in what was then a very white country.

Whether kept by mother or grandmothers, or sent to children’s homes, the ‘brown babies’, as the African-American press termed them, generally grew up knowing next to nothing about their fathers, thereby experiencing an acute sense of lack. Now in their early 70s, many have subsequently searched for their fathers and their American relatives. Drawing on oral history (interviews with 38 ‘brown babies’) the talk will explore their journey from frequently difficult…

For more information, click here.