SCSO1200: Race, Science, and Society
W 3:00-5:20PM
Prof. Catherine Bliss
Email: Catherine_Bliss@brown.edu
SB 201
Office: Sidney Frank 262
Office Hours: Weds 1-3pm
Course Description:
Why are drugs being marketed as racial saviors? What does biotechnology have to do
with race? This course is designed to introduce students to interdisciplinary approaches to
the role of race in science and society as an integrated natural and social scientific
endeavor. This seminar uses team-based pedagogy to explore real-world problems such
as validating knowledge about racial difference, the relationship between politics and
science, and the newest findings of scientific fields like anthropology, epidemiology, and
cognitive science. The class will be broken into groups that evenly consist of natural and
social science concentrators in order to simultaneously approach problems from natural
and social scientific perspectives. All assignments will be integrated group work.
Students will learn critical scholarship including the sociology of race, race theory, and
science and technology studies. This course is intended for seniors who are interested in
race and STS, but will favor students who co-enroll in BIOL 320, 800, or have taken
similar Biology courses. This is a S/NC course.
Course Requirements:
Participation 10%
You are permitted 2 excused absences. Thereafter, you grade goes down one letter. This
class and the learning you will be doing are entirely structured around interdisciplinary
weekly presentations and class discussion. I’m looking for thoughtful contributions that
refer directly to the readings and presentations at hand. Each class will be structured
around three discussion modules: 1) presentations of the week’s theories with respect to
your group’s case material, 2) application of the theory to current events, 3) large group
debate and discussion. Participation in all three is required.
Presentations 20%
Each week you will give a ten-minute natural and social scientific group presentation on
the problem of the week using the week’s featured STS theory. Your group will meet
outside of class to cull sources in contemporary science news and journals. Your group
will also be required to post a one-page summary of the presentation and the powerpoint
on the MyCourses discussion board, Tuesdays by 5pm.
Midterm
20%
1
For the midterm, you and your group will source and analyze existing Wikipedia pages
that pertain to one of the problems we address in class. Groups must critique three
webpages using race and STS theory, and provide a written copy of that critique on
MyCourses. Each group must present their analysis.
Final
20%
The final is a class-wide group project to create a Wikipedia page on one topic of the
course. We will decide on a topic at our eleventh meeting. You will be required to draw
on your midterm findings to bring a list of points for our final class. In class, we will
compile, debate, and select points, draft the page, and publish it.
Portfolio
30%
The portfolio shows your development and growth over the course. You are responsible
for collecting evidence of your participation in group work and writing a summary of
your contribution to the Wikipedia midterm and final assignments. Examples of evidence
include articles you found for the class archive, aspects of a presentation summary that
you were responsible for writing, slides you created for a powerpoint, and language you
authored for the Wikipedia entry.
Required Articles:
All articles listed below are available on OCRA.
Course Schedule:
Jan 25: Introductions
Feb 1: What is Race?
Hall, Stuart. 1996. Race, the Floating Signifier. Dir. Jhally, Sut. The Media Education
Foundation.
Brubaker, R. 2009. “Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism” Annual Review of Sociology
35: 21-42.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States:
from the 1960s to the 1990s. NY: Routledge. “Racial Formation.”
Feb 8: Evolution I – Natural History
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. 1997. Race and the Enlightenment: a reader. Cambridge,
Mass.: Blackwell. 1-34.
2
Bernasconi, Robert, and Tommy L. Lott, 2000. The Idea of Race. Indianapolis:
Hackett. Chapters 3, 5, and 8.
Suggested: Painter, Nell Irvin. 2010. The History of White People. New York and
London: Norton. 1-33.
Feb 15: Evolution II – Genetic Populations
Bliss, Catherine. 2009. “Genome Sampling and the Biopolitics of Race" in A
Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality Biopolitics and Discipline in the New
Millennium. Eds. Binkley, Samuel and Jorge Capetillo. Boston, MA: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Epstein, Steven. 2004. “Bodily differences and collective identities: The politics of
gender and race in biomedical research in the United States.” Body and Society 10:
183–203.
Fujimura, Joan. 2011. "Different differences: The use of 'genetic ancestry' versus race
in biomedical human genetic research." Social Studies of Science 41: 5-30.
Feb 22: Anthropology I - Anthropometrics
Reardon, Jenny. 2004. “Decoding Race and Human Difference in a Genomic Age.”
differences 15: 3-38.
Jackson, Fatimah. 2000. “Anthropological measurement: The mismeasure of African
Americans.” Annual Review of the American Academy of Political Social Science
568:154–171.
Keita, S.O.Y. and Rick Kittles.1997. “The persistence of racial thinking and the myth
of racial divergence.” American Anthropologist 99: 534-544.
Feb 29: Anthropology II – Molecular Anthropology
Morning, Ann. 2011. The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about
Human Difference. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Chapters 3 and 4.
Littlefield, A., L. Lieberman, and L. Reynolds. 1982. “Redefining race: The potential
demise of a concept in physical anthropology.” Current Anthropology 23: 641–656.
Suggested: Marks, Jonathan. 2002. What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press. “How People Differ from One Another.”
Mar 7: MIDTERM: Wikipedia analysis
Mar 14: Forensics I – Skeletal Science
Smedley, Audrey. 1993. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a World
View. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Chapters 7 and 8.
Goodman, Alan. 1997. “Bred in the bone?” The Sciences March/April: 20–25.
3
Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2008. “The bare bones of race.” Social Studies of Science 38:
657–
694.
Mar 21: Forensics II – Forensic Genomics
Duster, Troy. 2004. “Selective Arrests, an Ever-Expanding DNA Forensic Database,
and the Specter of an Early -Twenty-First-Century Equivalent of Phrenology.” The
Technology of Justice: DNA and the Criminal Justice System. Ed. D. Lazer.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ossorio, Pilar. 2006. “About Face: Forensic Genetic Testing for Race and Visible
Traits.” Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics 38: 278-292.
Fullwiley, Duana. 2008. “The Biologistical Construction of Race: ‘Admixture’
Technology and the New Genetic Medicine” Social Studies of Science 38: 695-707.
Mar 28: No Class (Spring Break)
Apr 4: Epidemiology I – Epidemiological Shifts
Washington Harriet A. 2006. Medical apartheid: The dark history of medical
experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. New York:
Doubleday. Chapters 1 and 2.
Reverby Susan M. 2009. Examining Tuskegee: the infamous syphilis study and its
legacy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Chapters 2-4.
Wailoo, Keith. How Cancer Crossed the Color Line. Oxford University Press: New
York, 2011. Chapters 2-4.
Apr 11: Epidemiology II – Population Studies
Shim Janet K. 2005. “Constructing 'race' across the science-lay divide: Racial
formation in the epidemiology and experience of cardiovascular disease.” Social
Studies of Science 35: 405-436.
Whitmarsh, Ian. 2008. Biomedical Ambiguity: Race, Asthma, and the Contested
Meaning of Genetic Research in the Caribbean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
“Vernaculars in Race and Disease Science” and “Contestations of Race.”
Montoya, Michael. 2011. Making the Mexican Diabetic: Race, Science, and the
Genetics of Inequality. University of California Press. Chapter 1.
Apr 18: Cognitive Science I – Evolutionary Psychology
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. NY: W. Norton & Company.
“Introduction” and “American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin.”
Ramsden, Edmund. 2006. “Confronting the stigma of perfection: genetic
demography, diversity and the quest for a democratic eugenics in the post-war United
4
States.” Working papers on the nature of evidence: how well do ‘facts’ travel?
Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political
Science, London, UK.
Fearnley, Andrew. 2008. “Primitive Madness: Re-Writing the History of Mental
Illness and Race.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 63: 245257.
Apr 25: Cognitive Science II – Psychiatric Classifications
Metzl, Jonathan. 2009. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black
Disease. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Preface and Chapters 1 and 2.
Duster, Troy. 1990. Backdoor to eugenics. New York: Routledge. Chapters 3-5.
May 2: FINAL: Wikipedia entry
5
Grading and Class Requirements 2012
Groups and Discussion:
This course is intended to bring together natural and social science perspectives in order
to tackle contemporary problems in race and science. The class will be broken into
groups that evenly consist of natural and social science concentrators. The idea is to have
maximum cross-pollination across the sciences and for those familiar with particular
aspects of the course to help out their fellow group members.
Each week, your group will meet outside of class to collect natural science sources on the
week’s problem (i.e., forensic constructions of skeletal science or psychiatric treatment of
schizophrenia) and to prepare a presentation and presentation summary that relates those
articles to the one of the class readings. Your group must post the presentation
powerpoint, summary, and articles to MyCourses by Tuesday 5pm so that we create
archives with which the entire class can work.
After each group presents, we will engage in large group discussion that will more
carefully analyze the body of literature that exists in the week’s MyCourses archive. This
is when you will be required to draw your own conclusions about the readings and the
literature and discuss them with the class. All together, we will take specific knowledge
claims and examine what actions can follow from that claim. We will generate questions
for further inquiry that can help us revise and promote alternative knowledge claims.
Attendance at all class events is expected. More than two excused absences may result in
extra assignments to make up missed work. You must let me know before you will be
absent in order for it to be an excused absence. You are also responsible for getting a note
from the Dean or Health Services.
Problems:
Each week presents a new aspect of race that is currently under study in the sciences, but
is not being problematized from a social scientific perspective in the academic
mainstream. With your group, you will approach these problems as cases to be analyzed
with the theoretical readings on the syllabus. Science, Nature, Journal of the American
Medical Association, and New England Journal of Medicine are great places to find
articles on the topics. You can also do an advanced search on GoogleScholar using the
problem as search term and limiting the search to the heyday of that week’s method.
Readings:
The readings listed on the syllabus are a required component of the course. It is most
helpful to read the material before and after you have presented on it, so you get a deeper
understanding of it. I have listed the readings for each week in an order from most
general and introductory to most specialized, therefore it would be best to read them as
6
such. There will be time each class for you to pose questions about the readings to the
larger group. I encourage you to bring at least one question each class.
Presentations:
Weekly presentations are designed to help you explore contemporary issues in new ways.
Each presentation will consist of: 1) presentation of at least 3 articles that your group has
culled from the science literature, 2) analysis of the articles using one of the readings.
Social science concentrators will be required to present the articles, while natural science
concentrators will present your group’s analysis. In your out-of-class meeting, you should
coach one another on how to best present the material.
Portfolio:
The portfolio shows your development and growth over the course. You are responsible
for collecting evidence of your participation in group work and writing a summary of
your contribution to the Wikipedia midterm and final assignments. Examples of evidence
include articles you found for the class archive, aspects of a presentation summary that
you were responsible for writing, slides you created for a powerpoint, and language you
authored for the Wikipedia entry.
Midterm and Final:
For the midterm, you and your group will source and analyze existing Wikipedia pages
that pertain to one of the problems we address in class. Groups must critique three
webpages and provide a written copy of that critique on MyCourses. Each group must
present their analysis.
The final is a class-wide group project to create a Wikipedia page on one topic of the
course. We will decide on a topic at our eleventh meeting. You will be required to draw
on your midterm findings to bring a list of points for our final class. In class, we will
compile, debate, and select points, draft the page, and publish it.
Growth and Evaluation:
This course will be graded S/NC. You will be graded on your progress as evidenced by a
portfolio of your participation in class assignments.
Some of the skills I will measure your progress by are your ability to work in an
interdisciplinary mode, source and critically analyze science articles, respond to and
discuss the readings, make connections between the readings and current science, and
critique knowledge claims and create alternative knowledge claims with the entire class.
Specifically, I will evaluate these skills in terms of your ability to communicate and use
sources and readings effectively.
7
In general, each student will start at different levels for each of the above skills. I will
consider you as emerging, developing or having mastered the above skills and during the
semester I will look for progress in each area.
1. “Emerging” is a polite way of saying you are a total beginner. That ought not to
be the case for most of you, since you are seniors and have been developing skills
in college for three years.
2. “Developing” suggests that you have the outlines of each of these skills but you
still have a way to go (e.g., a “developing” communicator uses language pretty
well, errors are infrequent but there are still problems of style, voice and
audience). Basic organization is visible but format can be inconsistent, and most
of the time sources are cited and used correctly.
3. A “Master” communicator means you are ready for graduate school, to excel at a
job and to be a brilliant political actor. Your language use is nuanced and
eloquent; minimal errors and appropriate style for the audience of choice; clear
organization; correct source citation.
8