Freshman Seminar 45m: The Concept of Race in Science and Medicine in the United States

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2011

Studies how biologists, anthropologists, and physicians took up the questions of racial classifications, race differences, and race mixing.  How did these ideas change as new tools such as genetics and evolutionary theory were developed?  What is the relationship between scientific debates about race and other debates about identity and citizenship in the larger US context?  How do new ideas about genetic variation among/between human groups enlist or resist concepts of race today?