Semester:
Offered:
Prof. Anna Jabloner
Wed. 12:45 PM - 2:45 PM
Peabody 561
This seminar examines the increasingly convoluted relationship between genetics/genomics and race in the United States.
In this contemporary moment, geneticists are debating definitions or locations of race on the human genome. Some draw on older racial classifications, others claim that the complexities of human ancestry cannot be captured by race. In this course, we will read social scientific studies of race categories in genetics and genomics, as well as scholarship on the meanings of race as identity category in American society. Rather than define what race really is or pass judgments on biology, our goal will be to understand a) the historically and culturally specific relationship between race and genetics, and b) the political stakes and charged conditions and implications of the current entanglements of genomic science and race categories in American society.
Open to advanced undergraduate students.