Myra S. Washington probes the social construction of race through the mixed-race identity of Blasians, people of Black and Asian ancestry. She looks at the construction of the identifier Blasian and how this term went from being undefined to forming a significant role in popular media. Today Blasian has emerged as not just an identity Black/Asian mixed-race people can claim, but also a popular brand within the industry and a signifier in the culture at large. Washington tracks the transformation of Blasian from being an unmentioned category to a recognized status applied to other Blasian figures in media. Blasians have been neglected as a meaningful category of people in research, despite an extensive history of Black and Asian interactions within the United States and abroad. Washington explains that even though Americans have mixed in every way possible, racial mixing is framed in certain ways, which almost always seem to involve Whiteness. Unsurprisingly, media discourses about Blasians mostly conform to usual scripts already created, reproduced, and familiar to audiences about monoracial Blacks and Asians. In the first book on this subject, Washington regards Blasians as belonging to more than one community, given their multiple histories and experiences. Moving beyond dominant rhetoric, she does not harp on defining or categorizing mixed race, but instead recognizes the multiplicities of Blasians and the process by which they obtain meaning. Washington uses celebrities, including Kimora Lee, Dwayne Johnson, Hines Ward, and Tiger Woods, to highlight how they challenge and destabilize current racial debate, create spaces for themselves, and change the narratives that frame multiracial people. Finally, Washington asserts Blasians as evidence not only for the fluidity of identities, but also for the limitations of reductive racial binaries.

Between Black and Brown explores the experiences of Blaxicans, individuals with African American and Mexican American heritage, as they navigate American culture, which often clings to monoracial categorizations.

This book highlights inconsistencies within the field of sports scholarship and provides an opportunity to open up and extend conversations about the intersection of sports media and race — particularly surrounding athletes of East Asian descent. Despite the growing influence of East Asian and Asian American/Canadian athletes, they are still underrepresented in Western media and in scholarship. This anthology adds much-needed literature to sports, popular culture, East Asian, and Asian American studies. The prominence of sports in global popular culture makes the intersections explored in this collection a crucial addition to existing conversations about both sports and East Asian/Asian American/Canadian studies.

This volume examines the Africa-Asia relationship from a transregional perspective, namely as a set of emergent social, political and economic practices spanning a number of analytical and spatial scales. Drawing on a host of countries from both regions, the contributions illustrate how encounters increasingly transcend fixed territorial categories at local, national and regional levels. While large-scale political and economic considerations tend to dominate in Asia-Africa related literature—for instance, in China-Africa, BRICS and South-South discourses—the current volume seeks to foster dialogue between these broader levels of analyses and more localized social practices and experiences, including the role of civil society, cultural production and migration. With an emphasis on the “trans” aspects of inter-regional exchange, the volume contributes to a better understanding of new forms of space-making between these two increasingly important regions.

Presents innovative scholarship on Latina/o visibility in contemporary mainstream media Latina/os have seen increased visibility in the media in the past several years, especially in feature-length films, network television programs, and various digital platforms. The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity explores Latina/o visibility—analyzing presence, production, and interpretation throughout various media. An important contribution to the emerging field of Latina/o Media Studies, this unique volume brings together political economy and cultural studies to consider the limitations of cultural politics and explore current issues relevant to Latina/o cultural inclusion. Author Angharad N. Valdivia addresses the concept of hybridity and applies it to contemporary Latinidad, in which hybrid Latina/os lead hybrid lives and consume hybrid media. The text explores strategies for gendered visibility in a range of popular culture media, using the concept of hybridity to connect Latina/o Studies to Feminist Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Ethnic Studies. Throughout the text, the author discusses the inclusion Latina/o scholars and audiences seek and considers if such inclusion is even achievable. Offering intersectional exploration of Latinidad in mainstream media, this volume: Explores the trope of the spitfire in the context of popular media Brings Disney Studies into Latina/o Studies Discusses the dynamic inclusion of Latinidad in awards ceremonies Assesses the implicit utopias of Latina/o representation Presents the only major academic treatment of Charo Presenting an original perspective on Latina/os in media, The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity is an ideal text for students and scholars in areas including Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, and general Media and Feminist Media Studies.

"The authors examine the stories and experience of mixed-race children and their families, in order to better understand how crossing racial boundaries within their own skin opens a world of difference and (often) difficulty that requires examination and response"--

Stemming from the 2000 Census when respondents could indicate more than one racial category for the first time in history, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification is the first study of its kind to explore how urban environmental dynamics influence biracial identification in the United States. Several different biracial pairings are incorporated into the analysis. Rachel Butts uses relative model differences to quantify the standing of each racial group on a multi-tiered racial hierarchy. Notably, Butts uses non-White biracial groups to contrast “minority” defined numerically or oppressively. The analysis successfully extends macrostructural theory from the context of interracial marriage to the context of interracial identification. Much like interracial marriage has been used as evidence of racial integration in the past, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification presents a compelling argument for using interracial identification for measuring interracial integration in contemporary times.

Contributing to the emerging literature on mixed-race people in the United States and United Kingdom, this book draws on racial formation theory and the performativity (i.e., "doing") of race to explore the social construction of mixedness on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Latina/o/x Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice spotlights contemporary Latina/o/x Communication Studies research in various theoretical, methodological, and academic contexts. Leandra H. Hernández, Diana I. Bowen, Sara De Los Santos Upton, and Amanda R. Martinez have assembled a collection of case studies that focus on health, media, rhetoric, identity, organizations, the environment, and academia. Contributors expand upon previous Latina/o/x Communication Studies scholarship by examining identity and academic experiences in our current political climate; the role of language, identity, and Latinidades in health and media contexts; and the role of social activism in rhetorical, environmental, organizational, and border studies contexts. Scholars of communication, Latin American Studies, rhetoric, and sociology will find this book particularly useful.

A much-needed text that takes stock of issues of ethnicity and race in communication studies, this book presents an overview of the most cutting-edge research, theory, and methods in the subject and advocates for centering ethnicity and race in the communication studies discipline. This handbook brings together a diverse group of both senior and up-and-coming scholars to offer original scholarship in race and ethnicity in communication studies, emphasizing various analytical perspectives including, but not limited to, global, transnational, diasporic, feminist, queer, trans, and disability approaches. While centering ethnicity and race, contributors also take an intersectional perspective in their approach to their topics and chapters. The book features examination of specific subfields, like Whiteness studies, Latina/o/x communication studies, Asian/Pacific American communication studies, African American communication and culture, and Middle East and North African communication studies. The text is oriented to graduate students and researchers within communication studies as well as media studies, cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, American studies, sociology, and education, while still being accessible to upper-level undergraduate students.