CMRS 2018 Storytellers Wanted

2018 Critical Mixed Race Studies
Call for Papers DEADLINE EXTENDING TO AUGUST 18TH!

Resisting, Reclaiming, and Reimagining
March 1 – 3, 2018
University of Maryland
Deadline: AUGUST 18, 2017, 11:59 PM
Notification: Mid September 2017
Presenters at the conference must be members. https://aaichicago.wufoo.com/forms/r1skfsoa0z4uu2q/
Subject Fields: We welcome submissions from scholars from all fields, cultural workers, and activists.

Formats: We welcome individual papers, panels, round tables, workshops or Mixed Roots Stories is looking for live performances and video. For example the live performances can be stand-up comedy, spoken word, dance, short scenes, monologues, vocalists, musicians – or other forms of live performance for our #CMRS2018 LIVE event. Please note the performances and/or video can also submit as a Workshop.
For more info: https://criticalmixedracestudies.wordpress.com/cmrs2018-ca…/

The conference will be hosted at the University of Maryland, March 1-3, 2018 and will include film screenings and a live performance showcase produced by Mixed Roots Stories.

THEME

Resisting, Reclaiming, and Reimagining, the next Critical Mixed Race Studies conference seeks to highlight resistance against white supremacy around the globe, the reclamation of community, kinship, and identity within the mixed-race community, and the reimagining of racial difference. Recent events demonstrate that white supremacy, coupled with sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and unchecked capitalism, is still central as an organizing principle and tool of domination. For example, borders and walls (both real and imagined) are being invoked by the current United States administration to marginalize people and combat the inevitable demographic shifts which will see this country become majority minority. By focusing on the resistance, reclamation, and reimagination of multiraciality, this interdisciplinary and transnational conference will be a forum dedicated to fostering relationships between people of color, dismantling racial hierarchies, and affirming an ethics of love to subvert dominant paradigms of social identity.

Apply online: https://goo.gl/forms/2Qwm0Sqw60FlLVzw1


Loving Day Cambridge 2017

We are excited to partner with various organizations and businesses as well as the City of Cambridge, MA to bring a series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision.

Loving Day Cambridge 2017 events will offer welcoming and celebratory spaces for individuals and families of all colors and cultures. Each event is open and free to the public and designed to reflect and promote inclusion, equity and the right to marry regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, physical and mental disability, sexual orientation or religion.

JOIN US!


Celebrate Multiracial Heritage Month with MICA

March is Multiracial Heritage Month at the Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy (MICA) center at the University of Maryland’s Stamp student union! Mixed Roots Stories is proud to partner with this exemplary university group and think it important to tell the stories of student leadership. Check out the re-cap of last year’s mixed heritage month and see this year’s awesome line-up of events (below)! Go participate in a talk, hear spoken word, see a film screening at UMD or, if you’re not a local, get inspired for your own multiracial heritage celebration! Tag your mixed heritage month posts on Twitter and Instagram @UMDMICA and @OurMixedStories.

If you’d like to get involved with MICA, contact coordinator Dr. Naliyah Kaya at nkaya@umd.edu; if you’re interested in partnering or would like to see your student group events/leadership story featured with Mixed Roots Stories, email kaily@mixedrootsstories.org.

Multiracial Activists in Black Social Justice Movements
When: Thursday, March 2nd @ 7pm
Where: Stamp Student Union Thurgood Marshall Room
Members of the UMD community will gather to discuss the role of multiracial activists in Black social justice movements such as #BlackLivesMatter. This even is cross-listed on the Black History Month Calendar. *Dessert provided.

Mixed Monologues
When: Wednesday, March 8th @ 7pm
Where: Stamp Student Union Art Gallery
Join TOTUS Spoken Word Experience for an evening of poetry performances hosted by UMD alum and spoken word artist Tony Keith. *Refreshments provided.

50 Years of Loving: Interracial Dating Across Generations Panel
When: Thursday, March @ 9th
Where: Stamp Student Union Pyon Su Room
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision, which banned anti-miscegenation laws nationally. Join a panel of students and local community members as they share their experiences with interracial dating and offer reflections on challenges and changes across generations. This event is cross-listed on the Black History Month calendar. *Refreshments provided.
From Black/Red Power to Hip Hop: Black & Indigenous Solidarities in Unexpected Places  When: Tuesday, March 14th @ 7pm
Where: Stamp Student Union Grand Ballroom Lounge
Join us for an exciting evening with Dr. Kyle T. Mays, historian of modern US, Afro-Indigenous, and Indigenous studies! *Food provided.
The Mixed Experience Brown Bag Lunch
When: Wednesday, March 15th @ 12pm                                                                                                                 Where: Stamp Student Union 1121 MICA/LCSL Conference Room 
Come out for an engaging dialogue focusing on the experiences of bi/multiracial people. You do not need to identify as bi/multiracial to attend. Lunch will be served, so come hungry!
Loving Film Screening
When: Monday & Tuesday, March 27th & 28th @ 8pm
Where: Stamp Student Union Hoff Theatre 
The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.
Your Cup, Your Culture: DIY                                                                                                                         When: Wednesday, March 29th @ 6-8PM
Where: Stamp Student Involvement Suite
Come decorate your own personal coffee mug with designs inspired by your culture and heritage. Mugs and materials will be provided, courtesy of the brothers of ATS. Designs will be part of a #yourcupyourculture social media campaign.

Multiracial Asian Americans In Dialogue
When: Thursday, April 6th @ 5PM
Where: Stamp Student Union 1121 MICA/LCSL Conference Room
This event is a space for people to share experiences related to multiracial identity within the Asian American community. Participants will engage in dialogue around community and build awareness of the needs of multiracial students at UMD. This event is cross-listed on the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Calendar


Mixed Roots Stories Schedule at CMRS 2017–At a Glance

Friday

10 AM in TCC 232: Mixed: Pop & Punk Culture

1PM in TCC 227: Coloured: Mixed-Race Voices from South Africa Documentary: Word of Honour: Reclaiming Mandela’s Promise

1 PM in TCC 232: Visual Culture: Mixed Bodies /Mixed Spaces

3 PM in TCC 232: Mixed and Interracial Worlds on Stage

6 PM @ Norris Cinema Theater 850 W. 34th St: Mixed Roots Stories LIVE Performance. Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mixed-roots-stories-live-performance-tickets-30492355456

 

Saturday

9:45 AM in TCC 301: “Interracial Marriage and Mixed Race Identity in the Age of Colorblindness: A Roundtable Discussion with the Cast of Colouring Book: The Mixed Race Documentary

2:30 PM in TCC 227: Mixed Roots Stories Performance Sampler

4:30 PM in TCC 227: Beyond Binaries: Contemporary Mixed, Queer, Trans, Asian Diasporic Art

 

Sunday

10 AM in TCC 232: Practices of Transgression: Accessing the Creative Potential of Liminal Identities to Imagine Radical Futures

10 AM in TCC 432: Critical Mixed Race Literature

1 PM TCC 232: Mixed Race Media Studies

3 PM in TCC 232: Comix, Manga, Zines, and Racial Navigation

5 PM in TCC Ballroom: Mixed Match by Jeff Chiba Stearns; Register here: https://mixedmatch.eventbrite.com


Mixed Roots Stories Performance Sampler @ CMRS 2017

Mixed Roots Stories Performance Sampler 2017

February 26th, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m.

At the 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference, four dynamic performers will share a sampling of their work followed by an open discussion with the artists on craft, process and engaging with themes of the mixed experience.

 

Elizabeth Chin and the Laboratory of Speculative Ethnology

The Jefferson-Hemings Complex
Elizabeth Chin is an ethnographer and anthropologist with a multifaceted practice that includes performative scholarship, collaborative research, and experimental writing. A professor at Art Center College of Design in the MFA program Media Design Practices/Field, she has published widely on children, consumption, anthropological practice. She has performed and done ethnography in the United States, Haiti, Uganda, and Cuba.

Gregory Diggs-Yang

Becoming Korean, While Growing Out My Afro: A Personal Narrative about a Moment in My Own Identity Development as a Mixed Korean and Black American
Gregory (Chan-wook) Diggs-Yang has a Bachelor’s (BA) in Education from Illinois State University and a Master’s (M.Ed.) in Educational Administration from UCLA. Greg has most recently moved from South Korea where he worked at Seoul National Universities as the Curriculum Coordinator for the IETTP (Teacher Training) and was a co-host of the Arirang Radio segment, ”Footprints of Korea with Chan-wook”. In addition he served as the President of the M.A.C.K. Foundation (Movement of the Advancement of Cultural-diversity of Koreans). A grassroots organization that supports multicultural schools and increases recognition and awareness of the diversity of Koreans. His areas of interest include multicultural education, mixed-heritage, and social justice. Greg is currently a doctoral candidate in the College of Education, Multicultural Education program at the University of Washington, Seattle. His dissertation looks at the support of biracial identity development through educational spaces.


Genevieve Erin O’Brien

Sugar Rebels

Genevieve Erin O’Brien is a Queer mixed race Vietnamese/Irish/German/American woman. She is an artist, a filmmaker, an organizer, a cook/private chef, and an educator who lives and works in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. O’Brien was a Fulbright Fellow in Vietnam, a recipient of the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles and Center for Cultural Innovation’s Creative Economic Development Fund. in 2016 she went to Hanoi, Vietnam as a US Dept. of State/ZERO1 American Arts Incubator Artist for a project highlighting LGBTQ visibility and equality. Her newest work More Than Love on the Horizon: West Coast Remix and Sugar Rebels were recently commissioned and presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

 

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.


CMRS 2017 Film Screenings

Mixed Roots Stories will feature the following two films during 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference:

Coloured: Mixed-Race Voices from South Africa

Documentary: Word of Honour: Reclaiming Mandela’s Promise

Directed by Kiersten Dunbar Chace

Photo Exhibition by Rushay Booysen

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017  1:00 – 2:30pm

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In 1997, two years prior to his exit from politics, President Nelson Mandela visited the Coloured (mixed-race) township of Bonteheuwel. While there, he delivers an informal speech to a crowd of men, women and children who feared their future once he left office. In 2014, twenty years post apartheid, a small South African crew led by director Kiersten Dunbar Chace traveled 7000 kilometers across the country to get a pulse on the broader Coloured community in South Africa and to bear witness to the promises he made that day in Bonteheuwel.

This beautifully filmed documentary shares the experience of seven individuals of different age and economic status from five different provinces and is held together by the fiery words of a Capetonian poet, questioning the definition of an apartheid crime.

 

 

Mixed Match by Jeff Chiba Stearns

Mixed Marrow founder Athena Mari Asklipiadis

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2017  5:00 – 7:00pm

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When being mixed race is more than just an identity, it’s a matter of life of death.

Mixed Match is an important human story told from the perspective of mixed race blood cancer patients who are forced to reflect on their multiracial identities and complex genetics as they struggle with a seemingly impossible search to find bone marrow donors, all while exploring what role race plays in medicine. With the multiracial community becoming one of the fastest growing demographics in North America, being mixed race is no longer just about an identity, it can be a matter of life and death.

The screening will be followed by a bone marrow drive with Mixed Marrow

and CMRS conference and Hapa Japan Festival closing program.

Co-sponsored by Kaya Students for Independent Publishing

Free tickets will be limited. Check back for a link to register.

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.

Day of walk-ins will also be welcome pending ticket availability.


Mixed Roots Stories LIVE 2017 performers

Mixed Roots Stories LIVE Performance 2017

February 25th, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.

Mixed Roots Stories will open the 4th Critical Mixed Race Studies conference with live performances by the following:

karimi-standing-72Robert Farid Karimi

Disco Jesus – new work TBA!

Robert Farid Karimi is a community engagement specialist and comedic storyteller. He works with everyday people in cities, companies, and health centers worldwide on making healthy messaging delicious using comedy, culture and food with his culinary cultural engagement project: ThePeoplesCook Project. And, he speaks on issues as mixed race/consciousness, food politics, community deliciousness and the power of the Fool/Trickster to change the world. www.KaRRRimi.com

crystal-alad-3Crystal Shaniece Roman

Black Latina the Play

In 2008 Ms. Roman launched The Black Latina Movement, LLC (BLM) and began performing BLM’s first written theatrical piece: a one woman show about the lives of dark-skinned Latinas and African American Latinas entitled Black Latina. In early 2013 Black Latina received a new format featuring an all female ensemble cast starring Judy Torres; during the fall the revamped Black Latina saw the success of multiple sold out shows. Since 2013 Black Latina the Play has been on tour in the Northeast at campuses such as: Hamilton College, Penn State University, Community College of Baltimore County-Essex and Lehigh University. Most recently Crystal revised the one woman version of Black Latina the Play after being invited to perform at the Smithsonian Institute for Hispanic Heritage Month Festival Latinidad- Looking into Latina Women’s American Experiences September 2016.

 

carly-headshotCarly Bates

Musings of Rachel Dolezal

Carly Bates is an emerging artist from Phoenix, Arizona. With a background in music and piano performance, she is active in the Arizona arts community as a creative collaborator with musicians, movers, poets, actors: storytellers. Having recently graduated from Arizona State University, Carly is currently working with a local playback theatre company called Essential Theater and is also the editor for the Mixed Roots Stories Commons.

 

zave-martohardjono-mr-5-2-16-6337-credit-david-gonsierZavé Gayatri Martohardjono

Untitled (Balinese dance study)

Zavé Gayatri Martohardjono makes intercultural, geopolitical, boundary-defying, high glam performance, video, and installations. Interested in embodied risk-taking and cross-cultural imagery, they combine improvisation with their own cultural roots: Indonesian mythology and dance, queer iconography. Brooklyn based, Zavé has shown at Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, Boston Center for the Arts, Center for Performance Research, Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Movement Research at Judson Church, Recess, SOMArts, Winslow Garage, among others. They have been an artist in residence at the Shandaken Project at Storm King, La MaMa Experimental Theatre, Chez Bushwick, and an Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Workshop Fellow.

 

dsc_7157_tLisa Marie Rollins

Performing an excerpt from SIDE CHICK: This ain’t no Harlequin Romance

Lisa Marie Rollins is playwright, poet, freelance director and dramaturg. Most recently she co-directed Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment (Crowded Fire Theater) and a reading of Tearrance Chisholm’s Br’er Cotton (Playwrights Foundation). She is the director of All Atheists are Muslimby Zahra Noorbakhsh and was co-producer of W. Kamau Bell’s “Ending Racism in About and Hour”. Lisa Marie performed her acclaimed solo play, Ungrateful Daughter: One Black Girl’s Story of Being Adopted by a White Family…That Aren’t Celebrities in festivals, universities and academic conferences across the US. She was Poet in Residence at June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at U.C. Berkeley, a CALLALOO Journal London Writing Workshop Fellow and an alumni in Poetry of VONA Writing Workshop. Her writing is published in Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal, Line/Break, As/Us Literary Journal,The Pacific Review and others. Currently, she is finishing her new manuscript of poems, Compass for which she received the 2016 Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award from SF Foundation. She is in development with her new play, Token. She holds degrees from The Claremont Graduate University and UC Berkeley. She is a Lecturer at St Mary’s College in Performance Studies, and a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco. Lisa Marie is a 2015-16 playwright member of Just Theater Play Lab and Artist-in-Residence at BRAVA Theater for Women in San Francisco.

sasaki_fredFred Sasaki EAT TO JAPANESE: Achieving ethnic authenticity by eating, shopping, emojis

A step-by-step guide to being genuine authentic

Fred Sasaki is the art director for Poetry magazine and a gallery curator for the Poetry Foundation. He is the author of Real Life Emails (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2017) and the zine series Fred Sasaki’s and Fred Sasaki’s Four-Pager Guide To: How to Fix You.

 

 

The Performance will be held at the Norris Cinema Theater 850 W 34th St, Los Angeles, CA 90089

This event is Co-Sponsored by the USC School of Cinematic Arts

Free tickets will be limited. Check back for a link to register.

For additional conference programing and other details visit the CMRS website.

Day of walk-ins will also be welcome pending ticket availability.

 


Let’s Make Loving Day a National Holiday

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It is time to make Loving Day a national holiday!

Celebrate Loving Day 2016 by signing the petition! And then spread the word to everyone you know.

Mixed Roots Stories is proud to be apart of this collaborative effort initiated by Loving Day (www.lovingday.org). Find out about other collaborators and ways to supper – here.

Here are some of their suggestions on ways to share on social media:

Sample posts (Twitter friendly):


New Student Org Partner, MICA, Celebrates Mixed Heritage Month

lovingday

The Stamp Student Union’s Center for Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy (MICA) at the
University of Maryland just commemorated March as Mixed Heritage Month with great success. Naliyah Kaya, Coordinator of Multiracial & Native American Indian/Indigenous Student Involvement & Advocacy, says that both events were, “a huge hit,” attracting students at a rate well above the norm.

This comes as no surprise, given the smart, interactive and creative events featured, including: “Exploring the Afro Latinx Experience” with spoken word artist Elizabeth Acevedo leading discussion, writing workshops on Afro Latinidad, and an interactive presentation on Afro-Latinx movements; a Mixed Monologues open mic, also hosted by Elizabeth Acevedo; and “Loving Day: Beyond Racial Boundaries,” which featured a panel of three couples sharing their experiences with being in an interracial relationship and reflection on the state of racial equity since Loving v. Virginia (see embedded links for more great stories & pictures from these events).

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We are proud to announce MICA as our newest partner and our first partner organization representing student organizing in a university setting. We are looking forward to sharing more about their student engagement practices and arts & cultural events in the future. Congratulations MICA!

Mixed Roots Stories is eager to support student leadership by linking arms with more on-campus organizations like MICA from across the country. If you are interested in partnering with us, send us an email at info@mixedrootsstories.org.

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Event Update: UC Berkeley Mixed Student Union Fall Conference

Board members Stephanie Sparling Williams and Kaily Heitz represented Mixed Roots Stories at the UC Berkeley Mixed Student Union’s (MSU) annual fall conference, Saturday, November 21, 2015. This year’s theme focused on our use of language around mixed race identity.

IMG_3157

MSU members, Laila and Biatris, greet attendees outside the Berkeley YWCA.

Stephanie was invited to present a workshop on mixed media and representation of mixed race artists. A number of other mixed race scholars, many of whom presented at CMRS ‘14, were also invited to present panels and keynote presentations, including Marc Johnston Guerrero, who discussed the concept of monoracism for the morning plenary. Present at the conference were approximately 50-60 attendees, mostly students from other mixed student organizations; there were large contingents from UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles.

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Mixed Roots board member, Stephanie Sparling-Williams, presents her workshop on mixed media.

In the afternoon, Kaily presented a keynote workshop, Both, All, And: Creating Communities to Support Mixed Student Organizing. Breakout sessions were designed to help students refine the purpose of their clubs and to understand how the language one uses in a mission statement is important to communicating a club’s goals to other, key partner departments, organizations, and regional networks. Attendees were also provided with toolkits and ideas for maintaining the integrity of a club across graduating classes.

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Mixed Roots board member, Kaily Heitz, presents keynote workshop in the afternoon, about sustaining mixed race student communities.

We had a great time presenting at Berkeley and found the conference to be a great source of inspiration; we can’t wait to continue the discussions we began with MSU and other student union representatives!

For more information about the UCB MSU, contact mixedstudentunion@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2200747115/