Histories of Race in Science and Medicine at Home and Abroad

This course has as its primary objective, the historical study of the intersection of race, science and medicine in the US and abroad with an emphasis on Africa and its Diasporas in the US. By drawing on literature from history, science and technology studies, sociology and other related disciplines, the course will consider the sociological and cultural concept of race and its usefulness as an analytical category. The course will explore how the study of race became its own ¿science¿ in the late-Enlightenment era, the history of eugenics--a science of race aimed at the ostensible betterment of the overall population through the systematic killing or "letting die" of humanity¿s "undesirable" parts, discuss how the ideology of pseudo-scientific racism underpinned the health policies of the French and British Empires in Africa, explore the fraught relationship between race and medicine in the US, discuss how biological notions of race have quietly slipped back into scientific projects in the 21st century and explore how various social justice advocates and scholars have resisted the scientific racisms of the present and future and/or proposed new paths towards a more equitable and accessible science.