240533 SE MM3 Race and Genetics: American Biopolitics (2023W)

This seminar examines the increasingly convoluted relationship between genetics 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 U.S. society.
The seminar has two larger goals:
1) To understand that race is never neutral. This is a realist perspective on American society, given what is known from history. The term race has a deep history in hierarchical thinking and oppressive practices. Even if we are speaking of “difference” today, and claim that this is neutral, these histories of violence and oppression are mobilized. Mundane human practices stand at the beginning of this word that has so much significance in US society today, that confronts everywhere from the doctor’s office to college applications to tailored website recommendations. Because race has its origins in human practices, in the things people did, talked about and instituted, one could say that the conditions of possibility for something like racial identity to exist here and now lie in socio-historical circumstances. The first goal is to gain a deeper understanding of an (American) reality in which race in essence marks difference from an invisible white norm.
2) To indicate research horizons beyond the ubiquitous question: is race real or socially constructed? Nature and society have never been separate realms “out there.” Material processes and the processes by which we make sense of things are not neatly separable. Instead, matter and meaning are entwined, literally, from the womb. This class will not land on one side of a false binary between real vs. constructed. Instead, you will learn about ways to think about race as real and constructed, in constant intersections with other identity categories haunted by biology, such as gender. I view this approach as a key transdisciplinary bridge in the current impasse where the much too divided natural and social sciences tend to sit on either side of this binary. It is my hope that exposure to these different, in particular feminist epistemologies – ways of knowing – will prove productive for your anthropological, inter- or transdisciplinary research trajectories.
• Attendance of each session is mandatory.
• Students will be required to read books and research articles from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, history of science, and others. Students will need to complete assigned readings in advance of each session. In addition, the readings below are to be completed before the first seminar in May.
• During the course, I will provide short lectures in each session. Students will read materials together, watch pertinent materials, discuss assigned topics in groups, and participate in general seminar discussion that tackles these problems in a broader perspective.