Mixed-Race Superheroes

SIKA A. DAGBOVIE-MULLINS is an associate professor of English at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Her publications include the book Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture.   ERIC L. BERLATSKY is a professor of English at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where he also serves as the associate dean of graduate studies and directs the Ph.D. program in comparative studies.  His books include The Real, the True, and the Told: Postmodern Historical Narrative and the Ethics of Representation and the edited volume Alan Moore: Conversations.

• Introduction by Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L. BerlatskyPart I    Superheroes in Black and White1. Guess Who’s Coming Home? Mixed Metaphors of Home in Spider-Man’sComic and Cinematic Homecomings by Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins                       2. The Ride of the Valkyrie Against White Supremacy: Tessa Thompson’s Casting in Thor:Ragnarok by Jasmine Mitchell                                                                                  3. “Which World Would You Rather Live In?” The Anti-utopian Superheroes of GaryJackson’s Poetry by Chris Gavaler                                                    4. Flash of Two Races: Incest, Miscegenation, and the Mixed-Race Superhero in TheFlashComics and Television Show by Eric L. BerlatskyPart II    Metaphors of/and Mixedness                       5. “Let Yourself Just Be Whoever You Are!” Decolonial Hybridity and the Queer CosmicFuture in Steven Universe by Corrine E. Collins                                               6. The Hulk and Venom: Warring Blood Superheroes by Gregory T. Carter7. Monsters, Mutants, and Mongrels: The Mixed-Race Hero in Monstress by Chris Koenig-Woodyard                                                                              8. Examining Otherness and the Marginal Man in DC’s Superman through Mixed-RaceStudies by Kwasu David TemboPart III    Multiethnic Mixedness (or Mixed-Race Intersections)9. Talented Tensions and Revisions: The Narrative Double Consciousness of Miles Moralesby Jorge J. Santos Jr.10. “They’re Two People in One Body”: Nested Sovereignties and Mixed-RaceMutations in FX’s Legion by Nicholas E. Miller11. Into to the Spider-Verse and the Commodified (Re)imagining of Afro-Rican Visibility by Isabel Molina-GuzmÁn12. Truth, Justice, and the (Ancient) Egyptian Way: DC’s Doctor Fate and the Arab Springby Adrienne ReshaAcknowledgmentsNotes on ContributorsIndex

"How often do you read a book that you simultaneously think, I want to assign this to my graduate seminar, cite it in the piece I’m working on, and slip a copy to my teenage kid? Sika Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric Berlatsky’s Mixed-Race Superheroes shatters conventional notions of race, gender, and sexuality in the superhero genre while providing a deeply satisfying, critically engaging and eminently enjoyable read."- Ralina Joseph (author of Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media Culture, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity) "While it has long been known that white supremacy was baked into the superhero at its origin some eighty years ago, this important collection of essays examines vibrant new works that reimagine and reinvent that troubled legacy. Through discussions of such figures as Miles Morales, the cinematic Valkyrie and Barack Obama, it advances the growing centrality of mixedness, mestiza consciousness and intersectionality in the transmedial twenty-first-century superhero genre. Given the realities of living in the post-2016 USA, this book couldn’t come at a better time."- José Alaniz (author of Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond) "Dagbovie-Mullins and Berlatsky’s book is a unique and timely collection discussing superhero comics and films at the intersection of comics studies and critical mixed-race studies. The chapters provide valuable resources for scholars as well as students in multiple disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, and make a significant contribution to existing scholarship on racial mixedness in cultural productions."- Lan Dong (Louise Hartman Schewe and Karl Schewe Professor, University of Illinois Springfield) "An insightful and transformative work. Mixed-Race Superheroes reveals the hidden possibilities of the superhero genre. Profoundly thoughtful and carefully researched, this volume uses the ubiquitous cultural language of the superhero genre and the complexity inherent to racial hybridity to illustrate crucial points about identity, community, and power in the United States. This volume uses a transmedia framework to bring characters, settings, and themes linked to superheroes into a dynamic and revealing conversation. This collection will be useful for researchers steeped in these issues while highlighting innovative points of inquiry for scholars new to the superhero genre."  - Julian C. Chambliss (co-editor of Assembling the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Essays on the Social, Cultural and Geopolitic) "This scholarly, lucidly written, and timely book will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and a wider readership, the essays being accompanied by detailed end-notes, comprehensive lists of works cited, and an excellent index. The book will be essential reading for those in a wide variety of fields and disciplines, including critical mixed-race studies, social/cultural representations, comics studies, popular culture, and sociology, and also interdisciplinary studies." (Ethnic and Racial Studies) "Well-argued and presents a fascinating angle for approaching the issue of mixed-race superheroes." (International Journal of Comic Art)