Mixed-Race America

Spring 2022

Mixed-Race America

Listed in: American Studies, as AMST-225

Moodle site: Course (Login required)

Faculty

Wendy H. Bergoffen (Section 01)

Description

In 2015 the Pew Research Center identified mixed-race Americans as “the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the US.” Prior to that, revisions to the United States Census in 2000 enabled the checking of multiple identity boxes, increasing the visibility of mixed-race people. Despite this recent recognition, the fact of mixed-race peoples in the Americas is nothing new. Since the Colonial period, laws governing citizenship, marriage and rights prohibited or punished miscegenation; yet, mixed-race people proliferated. Representations of and designations for racial mixing focused on negative conceptions of blood and degeneracy. In more recent decades, mixed-race people have claimed their hybridity, renamed themselves, and even declared their own “Bill of Rights.” Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course will examine mixed-race identity through a range of materials: legal cases, history, ethnography, visual art, literature, and critical theory. The course will also include material on transnational, transracial adoptions, and the mixed-race households they engender.

Limited to 20 students per section. Spring semester. Professor Hayashi and Lecturer Bergoffen.

If Overenrolled: Preference given to American Studies majors.

Offerings