Sika Dagbovie-Mullins
Sika Dagbovie-Mullins is a professor in the Department of English where she specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century African American literature. She is author of Crossing B(l)ack: Mixed Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture (University of Tennessee Press, 2013) and co-editor of Mixed-Race Superheroes (Rutgers University Press, 2021) which examines representations of racial mixedness and the idea of the superhero. Her work in Comic Studies also includes several co-authored articles that focus on how various superheroes (and super-villains!) are raced including Vermin, Spider-Man, Moon Girl, and Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel.
Mixed-Race Superheroes, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, editors. Rutgers University Press, 2021.
鈥淕uess Who鈥檚 Coming Home: Mixed Metaphors of Home in Spider-Man鈥檚 Comic and Cinematic Homecomings.鈥� Mixed-Race Superheroes, edited by Sika A. Dagbovie- Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, Rutgers University Press, 2021. 27-45.
Co-authored with Eric Berlatsky. 鈥淭he Mixed-Race Child Within: Psychoanalyzing Race, Trauma, Vermin, and Spider-Man.鈥� Comics on the Couch, special issue of American Imago, 77.3 (Fall 2020): 569-601. (Solicited by editor)
Co-authored with Eric Berlatsky. 鈥淭he Whiteness of the Whale and the Darkness of the Dinosaur: The Africanist Presence in Superhero Comics from Black Lightning to Moon Girl鈥� Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, edited by Martin Lund and Sean Guynes-Vishniac, The Ohio State University Press, 2020. 38-56.
Co-authored with Eric Berlatsky. 鈥溾�楾he Only Nerdy Pakistani-American-Slash-Inhuman in the Entire Universe鈥�: Postracialism and Politics in the New Ms. Marvel.鈥� Ms. Marvel鈥檚 America, edited by Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid, University Press of Mississippi, 2020. 65-88.
鈥溾�榯he Black girl/ You cannot kill鈥�: Autoethnographic Reflections on Black Girlhood, Power, and Superheroes.鈥� The National Women鈥檚 Studies Association. Minneapolis, MN, November 2022.
鈥淭he Ghostly Mulatto and the Transcendent Half-Breed: Ant-Man and the Wasp and Aquaman.鈥� Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (virtual), March 2022.
鈥淰ermin and the Tragic Mulatto Archetype in 鈥楽pider-Man: The Child Within.鈥欌�� Michigan State University Comics Forum. East Lansing, MI, February 2020.
鈥淏lack Girl Magic in Contemporary Speculative Texts.鈥� Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Charleston, South Carolina, October 2019.
鈥淕uess Who鈥檚 Coming Home: Racial Passing and Subterfuge in Spider-Man鈥檚 Comic and Cinematic Homecomings.鈥� MSU Comics Forum. East Lansing, MI, February 2019.
鈥淲hite Moon/Dark Devil: Embodying Whiteness in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.鈥� National Popular Culture & American Culture Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 2018.