Note on Title

The conference committee wishes to acknowledge the sensitive and potentially offensive nature of our conference title, “Mongrel America.”

The term “mongrel” is an admittedly powerful one. In its more literal context, it refers to individuals or entities produced from the mixture of various strains and origins. But more than a term connoting mixture, it elicits the painful history of America’s past. The ominous threat of “mongrelization” provided and still serves as a pretext for the institutionalization of legal and social subjugative practices against people of color, immigrants, the poor, and those otherwise classified as “undesirable.”  

Our intention with the use of this term is to grapple with various discourses produced around notions of mixture. Paradoxically, American cultural and racial heterogeneity is often celebrated, even occasionally lauded with reverence of its “melting pot” heritage. Its historical legacy, however, pointedly contests such sanguine overtones. The containment, separation, exclusion, and/or preoccupation with “contamination” within the cultural landscape deeply informs American national identity. Conversely, some have argued that by virtue of its mixed heritage and transgression of borders, the U.S. has reached a post-racial moment in which “everyone and everything” is mixed.  Such contradictions inevitably produce tension over concepts like “hybridity”, which although established in the realm of academia, has been challenged by emergent theoretical frameworks, as well as confronted by the realities of U.S. and global hegemonic practices.

Thus, as scholars, we seek to promote serious and critical dialogue around a subject which far from being simply “provocative” carries very real and potent meaning. Whether being used in its historical context or as a recuperative term, “mongrel” evokes powerful sentiments regarding relationships of identity and power. It is our hope that our conference will serve as a forum to explore and further complicate our understanding of this matter.

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For more information or any questions please feel free to contact committee chair: Irene Garza or send general inquiries to utamst08@gmail.com