"Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks and the 'Ethno-Ambiguo Hostility Syndrome'"

a workshop with

Michele Elam

Monday, October 10, 2005
Board Room, Stanford Humanities Center, 4:00-6:00 PM

Respondent: Jennifer Harford Vargas Graduate Student, Department of English Stanford University

Abstract: Aaron McGruder's nationally-syndicated comic strip series, "The Boondocks," is renowned for its acute, often controversial, cultural commentary on racial politics in America. The millenial phenomenon of "mixed race" identification has not escaped McGruder's eye (nor his ire). Professor Elam's workshop examines these representations of "mixed race" in the graphic genre of "The Boondocks" as a form of pop-cultural intervention in contemporary debates over "mixed race" identity. A short presentation will be followed by an open roundtable discussion and collective analysis of the images. No prior reading necessary; short handouts on the mixed-race controversy and on the problems of analyzing comics handed out at the presentation.

Michele Elam, professor of English in the School of Humanities and Sciences, received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Her forthcoming book, Mixed Race in the New Millennium, focuses on mixed race in literary and cultural studies. Professor Elam has published articles in African American Review, American Literature, and Genre, among others, and is the author of Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Professor Elam teaches seminars on Slave Narratives; Mixed Race Literature and Theory; W.E.B. Du Bois and American Culture; the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances; Introduction to African American Literature; and a graduate seminar on African American Literary History & Theory, among others.

Jennifer Harford Vargas is a 2nd year Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English at Stanford University.