CHSTM lecture series: Perspectives on Race Science and Scientific Racism

2021-02-18

This series of discussions by scholars in the humanities and social sciences explores a variety of issues related to science, race, and racism.

Listen to perspectives on the history of race science and scientific racism around the world; the intersection of race with issues of class, gender, and scientific investigation; and the ways in which the pseudoscience on race continues on in the current era.

After listening, be sure to explore the "Resources" section with further reading and information for researchers.

  • Elise Burton analyzes the development of genetics, race science, and race concepts in the contemporary Middle East.
  • Sadiah Qureshi recounts the history of the exhibition of displayed peoples in nineteenth-century Britain, and how these shows contributed to the formation of anthropology.  
  • Sebastián Gil-Riaño examines how scientific articulations of human diversity have been used to both legitimize and confront notions of race and racism in the modern world.
  • Rana Hogarth talks about how white physicians "medicalized" blackness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how African-Americans pushed back against this endeavor.
  • John Jackson discusses the legacy of nineteenth-century race science on twentieth-century scientific investigation, the challenge to race science made by population genetics and anthropology, and the ways in which the pseudoscience of race continues to inform twenty-first century debates.