Race Unmasked: A 20th Century Struggle to Define Human Difference

Time: 12:00pm

Location: Claire Fagin Hall, Room 435, Floor 4

This talk explores the history of the formulation and preservation of the race concept, and explores the role that science, particularly genetics and related biological disciplines, played in the making of America’s racial calculus over the course of the twentieth century. The talk will also examine how ideas about race developed into a biological concept during the twentieth century, and how that concept has persisted in various incarnations as accepted scientific fact into the twenty-first. Finally, the talk considers how this history shaped a contemporary paradox in thinking about the biological race concept; that is, that race can be understood to be both a critical methodological tool for biologists to make sense of human genetic diversity and, at the same time, it is also widely believed not to be a particularly accurate marker for measuring that diversity.

To register for the seminar, please visit nursinghistory.eventbrite.com.