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.

SF/F Related Publications

Mixed-Race Superheroes, Sika A. Dagbovie-Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, editors. Rutgers University Press, 2021.

“Guess Who’s Coming Home: Mixed Metaphors of Home in Spider-Man’s Comic and Cinematic Homecomings.” Mixed-Race Superheroes, edited by Sika A. Dagbovie- Mullins and Eric L. Berlatsky, Rutgers University Press, 2021. 27-45.

Co-authored with Eric Berlatsky. “The Mixed-Race Child Within: Psychoanalyzing Race, Trauma, Vermin, and Spider-Man.” Comics on the Couch, special issue of American Imago, 77.3 (Fall 2020): 569-601. (Solicited by editor)

Co-authored with Eric Berlatsky. “The Whiteness of the Whale and the Darkness of the Dinosaur: The Africanist Presence in Superhero Comics from Black Lightning to Moon Girl” 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. “‘The Only Nerdy Pakistani-American-Slash-Inhuman in the Entire Universe’: Postracialism and Politics in the New Ms. Marvel.” Ms. Marvel’s America, edited by Jessica Baldanzi and Hussein Rashid, University Press of Mississippi, 2020. 65-88.

Conferences

“‘the Black girl/ You cannot kill’: Autoethnographic Reflections on Black Girlhood, Power, and Superheroes.” The National Women’s Studies Association. Minneapolis, MN, November 2022.

“The Ghostly Mulatto and the Transcendent Half-Breed: Ant-Man and the Wasp and Aquaman.” Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (virtual), March 2022.

“Vermin and the Tragic Mulatto Archetype in ‘Spider-Man: The Child Within.’” Michigan State University Comics Forum. East Lansing, MI, February 2020.

“Black Girl Magic in Contemporary Speculative Texts.” Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Charleston, South Carolina, October 2019.

“Guess Who’s Coming Home: Racial Passing and Subterfuge in Spider-Man’s Comic and Cinematic Homecomings.” MSU Comics Forum. East Lansing, MI, February 2019.

“White Moon/Dark Devil: Embodying Whiteness in Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.” National Popular Culture & American Culture Conference, Indianapolis, IN, March 2018.