This panel seeks papers that engage in critical mixed race studies in order to explore the conference theme, "Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict." How do representations of multiraciality reflect, refract, and/or
rend the hierarchies of power built around race, gender, sexuality, and
class? How do representations of multiraciality intersect with and/or
interrogate colonial hierarchies or anti-colonial resistance? How do
representations of multiraciality imagine, locally and globally,
collective action and community formation? This special session seeks papers that explore these and other
questions through literary, filmic, and cultural texts across a range of
historical periods, geographic areas, and genres.
Critical Mixed Race Studies is an emerging field that examines constructions of race through a focus on the multiracial subject. This often interdisciplinary and transnational study highlights—to use the words of founding scholars Camilla Fojas, Laura Kina, and Wei Ming Dariotis—“the mutability of race” in order to address “local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.” Beginning with this focus, this special session considers how texts—broadly conceived—explore multiraciality in relation to the conference theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict.” How do representations of multiraciality reflect, refract, and/or rend the hierarchies of power built around race, gender, sexuality, and class? How do representations of multiraciality intersect with and/or interrogate colonial hierarchies or anti-colonial resistance? How do representations of multiraciality imagine, locally and globally, collective action and community formation? This special session seeks papers that explore these and other questions through literary, filmic, and cultural texts across a range of historical periods, geographic areas, and genres.