AFRI1060Q: The New Science of Race: Racial Biomedicine in the 21st Century
Wednesdays 3:00-5:20pm
Prof. Catherine Bliss
Office: B8 Churchill House
Watson 114
Email: Catherine_Bliss@brown.edu
Office Hours: W 1:00-3:00pm & by appt.
Course Description:
This course draws on film, news media, scientific discourse, and social theory to engage
biomedicine’s most controversial investigations of race and the social scientific questions
they have provoked. The course asks: How is contemporary science imagining,
constructing, and producing knowledge about race? What are the social, political, and
cultural implications of this knowledge? Students will be introduced to important science
studies methods that we will apply to historical and contemporary research agendas. No
prior knowledge of science or racial theory is required.
Course Requirements:
Participation
20%
You are permitted 2 excused absences thereafter, you grade goes down one letter. You
will be graded on your participation in class discussions of the visual and textual
materials. There are several films that you will need to view on your own and be ready to
discuss in class. All course materials are online at OCRA, including live-streamed films.
Presentations
10%
The weekly presentation will be about the technology domain you have chosen to analyze
for your final paper (see below). Each week, you will show and tell one primary source
that you have culled from the web, news media, or science media. Explain the relevance
of your source to the issues we are discussing that week. This is an opportunity to share
sources with others covering the same technology domain.
Midterm
30%
Take one of the course films and analyze it using one of the theoretical or critical
perspectives we have thus far studied. Explain how genomics is being used to understand
race and racial identities. Discuss any underlying assumptions the people featured in the
film or the filmmakers themselves might have about race. How are they defining race?
How do they use biology to redefine race? What are some possible social or political
implications?
Final Paper
40%
Think critically about one of three genomic technology domains: pharmacogenomics,
genealogy, or forensics. Drawing on primary sources from the public domain (scientific
articles, company websites, policy statements, etc.) and secondary sources from this class
(race theories and critical papers), mount an argument about the social implications and
significance of the technology domain for race. Think specifically of what the technology
claims to do, how claims about the technology are framed, what important issues are left
out of or obfuscated by the scientific discourse, and how these discourses affect society's
notions of race.
Writing counts. You will be graded on how well you demonstrate your ability to apply
the ideas, concepts, and theories from this class.
Warning: It is not enough to simply compare your case study to Epstein’s
concept of the biopolitical paradigm; you should point out specific features of
your domain and compare these to specific parts of Epstein’s definitions. In the
process of doing so, you will demonstrate both that you have critically analyzed
your domain, AND that you have a detailed and sophisticated understanding of
Epstein’s arguments vis-à-vis other conceptualizations.
Chicago citation form is required:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Course Schedule:
Jan 26: Introductions
View: Race the Power of An Illusion. PBS. Producer: Larry Adelman. DVD.
Feb 2: Introduction to the Phenomenon
View: Race the Power of An Illusion. PBS. Producer: Larry Adelman. DVD.
Bamshad, Michael J and Steve E Olson. 2003. “Does Race Exist?” Scientific
American, November 10: 78–85.
Adler, Jerry. 2009. “What’s Race Got to Do With It? Nine clinical trials around
the world are studying treatments in groups defined by race, gender or
both.” Newsweek Jan 3. http://www.newsweek.com/id/177737.
Feb 9: Geneticization of Race
View: Motherland: A Genetic Journey. 2003. Takeaway Media Production for
BBC TWO. Dir: Archie Baron. Prod: Tabitha Jackson. DVD.
Duster, Troy. 2005. “Race and Reification in Science.” Science 307:1050-1051.
Sankar, Pamela. 2003. “MEDLINE Definitions of Race and Ethnicity and Their
Application to Genetic Research.” Nature Genetics 32:119.
Feb 16: Genomics Debates Race
View: Journey of Man. 2002. PBS. Host: Spencer Wells. DVD.
Wade, Nicholas. 2002. “Race is seen as real guide to track roots of disease” New
York Times Jun 30.
Rosenberg, Noah A, Saurabh Mahajan, Sohini Ramachandran, Chengfeng Zhao,
Jonathan K Pritchard and Marcus W Feldman. 2005. “Clines, Clusters,
and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population
Structure.” PLoS Genetics 1:e70.
Burchard, Esteban González, Elad Ziv, Natasha Coyle, Scarlett Lin Gomez, Hua
Tang, Andrew J. Karter, Joanna L Mountain, Eliseo J Pérez-Stable, Dean
Sheppard, and Neil Risch. 2003. “The Importance of Race and Ethnic
Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice.” The New
England Journal of Medicine 348:1170-1175.
Feb 23: Critical Perspectives
View: African American Lives. 2008. PBS. Host: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. DVD.
Patrinos, Ari et al. 2004. Supplemental issue to Nature Genetics. “Genetics for
the human race.” (Twelve articles available through Nature.com)
Bolnick, Deborah A, Duana Fullwiley, Troy Duster, Richard S. Cooper, Joan H.
Fujimura, Jonathan Kahn, Jay S. Kaufman, Jonathan Marks, Ann
Morning, Alondra Nelson, Pilar Ossorio, Jenny Reardon, Susan M.
Reverby, Kimberly TallBear. 2007. “The Science and Business of
Genetic Ancestry Testing.” Science 318:399-400.
Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin and Ashwin Mudaliar. 2009. “Racing Forward: The
Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act.” Science 323:342.
Braun, Lundy, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Duana Fullwiley, Evelynn M. Hammonds,
Alondra Nelson, William Quivers, Susan M. Reverby, and Alexandra E.
Shields. 2007. “Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are
They?” PLoS Medicine 4:e287:1423-1428.
Mar 2: Theorizing Race
View: Race, the Floating Signifier. 1996. Host: Stuart Hall. VHS.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States:
from the 1960s to the 1990s. NY: Routledge. “Racial Formation.”
Lee, Orville and Sarah Daynes. 2008. Desire for Race. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press. “Belief and Social Action” and “Theorizing
the Racial Ensemble.”
Mar 9: Understanding Race as Knowledge
Smedley, Audrey. 2007. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a
Worldview. Boulder: Westview Press. “Some Theoretical Considerations.”
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1996. The Mismeasure of Man. NY: W. Norton & Company.
“Introduction” and “American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin.”
Marks, Jonathan. 2002. What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. “How People Differ from One Another.”
(e-book)
Mar 16: Social Study of Scientific Knowledge
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.”
Epstein, Steven. 2007. Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. “To Profile or not to Profile.”
Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. “Race in the Age of Genomic Medicine.”
Mar 23: Making Populations
Reardon, Jenny. 2004. “Decoding Race and Human Difference in a Genomic
Age.” differences 15:3-38.
Gannett, Lisa. 2001. Racism and Human Genome Diversity Research: The Ethical
Limits of "Population Thinking" Philosophy of Science 68 Supplement:
Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science
Association. Part I: Contributed Papers. S479-S492.
Braun, Lundy and Evelyn Hammonds. 2008. “Race, populations, and genomics:
Africa as laboratory.” Social Science & Medicine 67:1580–1588.
MIDTERM DUE
Apr 6: Pharmacogenomics
View: Nitromed. 2007. BiDil Clinical Resources. ppt.
Rotimi, Charles. 2007. Frontiers in Population Genomics: Research
Directions for NHGRI Health and Health Disparities of US Race/Ethnic
Minority Populations. ppt.
Wade, Nicholas. 2004. “Race-based medicine continued…” New York Times Nov
14.
Cohn, Jay N. 2007. “The Use of Race and Ethnicity in Medicine: Lessons from
the African-American Heart Failure Trial.” Journal of Law, Medicine, and
Ethics 34:552-554.
Carlson, RJ. 2005. “The Case of BiDil: A Policy Commentary on Race and
Genetics.” Health Affairs W:464-468.
Puckrein, Gary. 2006. “BiDil: From Another Vantage Point.” Health Affairs
W:368-374.
Kahn, Jonathan. 2007. “Race in a Bottle.” Scientific American 40-45.
Apr 13: Ancestry Estimation
Rotimi, Charles. 2003. “Genetic Ancestry Tracing and the African Identity: A
Double-Edged Sword?” Developing World Bioethics 3:151-158.
Dula, Annette, Charmaine Royal, and Marian Gray Secundy. 2003. “The Ethical
and Social Implications of Exploring African American Genealogies.”
Developing World Bioethics 3:133-141.
Fullwiley, Duana. 2008. “The Biologistical Construction of Race: `Admixture'
Technology and the New Genetic Medicine” Social Studies of Science
38:695-707.
Nelson, Alondra. 2008. “The Factness of Diaspora: The Social Sources of Genetic
Genealogy.” Pp. 253-269 in Revisiting Race In a Genomic Age. Eds.
Barbara A Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson.
Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Apr 20: Forensics
View: Krimsky, Sheldon. 2009. Forensic DNA Primer. Council for Responsible
Genetics.
Willing, Richard. 2005. “DNA tests offer clues to suspect’s race.” USA TODAY
Aug 16. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16dna_x.htm?POE=click-refer.
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.
Sankar, Pamela and Mildred Cho. 2004. “Forensic genetics and ethical, legal and
social implications beyond the clinic. Nature Genetic Supplement 36:S8S13.
Apr 27: The Biologistical Future
Epstein, Steven. 2008. “The Rise of ‘Recruitmentology’.” Social Studies of
Science. 38:801-832.
Benjamin, Ruha. 2009. “A Lab of Their Own: Genomic Sovereignty as
Postcolonial Science Policy.” Policy & Society.
Paradies, Yin C., Michael J. Montoya and Stephanie M. Fullerton. 2007.
“Racialized Genetics and the Study of Complex Diseases: The Thrifty
Gene Hypothesis Revisited.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
50:203–227.
Snyder, Sharon L. and David T. Mitchell. 2006. “Eugenics and the racial genome:
politics at the molecular level.” Patterns of Prejudice 40:399-412.
FINAL DUE