[P] = Pollock, Anne. Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States. University of Minnesota Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781517911720.
[K] = Kirksey, Eben. The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans. St. Martin’s Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781250265357. [Preview with Google Books]
[R] = Roosth, Sophia. Synthetic: How Life Got Made. University of Chicago Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780226440460.
| SES # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Life Now | “Meanings of ‘Life’.” Nature 447 (2007): 1031–32. |
| 2 | What is Life? |
Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form.” Chapter 1 in Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780674012509. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Molecules, Messages, and Memory: Life and the Second Law.” Chapter 2 in Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. Columbia University Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780231102056. [Preview with Google Books] Kay, Lily E. “In the Beginning Was the Word?: The Genetic Code and the Book of Life.” Chapter 15 in The Science Studies Reader. Edited by Mario Biagioli. Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415918688. Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan. “Life: The Eternal Enigma.” Chapter 1 in What Is Life? University of California Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780520220218. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 3 | Evolutionary Narratives, Epidemiological Dramaturgy |
Beer, Gillian. “Introduction.” In Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780521743617. Fedigan, Linda Marie. “The Changing Role of Women in Models of Human Evolution.” Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 25–66. (Read only pp. 25–31.) Rosenberg, Charles E. “What Is an Epidemic? AIDS in Historical Perspective.” Daedalus 118, no. 2 (1989): 1–17. Carr, Danielle. “A Virus Without a World.” The Nation, September 7, 2021. Wailoo, Keith. “Spectacles of Difference: The Racial Scripting of Epidemic Disparities.” (PDF - 1.6MB) Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94, no. 4 (2020): 602–25. |
| 4 | Race, Racism, and Racialization from Eugenics to Genomics |
Read: Smedley, Audrey. “‘Race’ and the Construction of Human Identity.” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1999): 690–702. (Read only pp. 690–96.) Reilly, Philip R. “Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907–2015.” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 16 (2015): 351–68. Goodman, Alan. “Race Is Real, But It’s Not Genetic.” Sapiens, March 13, 2020. TallBear, Kim. “Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity.” Social Studies of Science 43, no. 4 (2013): 509–33. Nelson, Alondra. “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry.” Social Studies of Science 38, no. 5 (2008): 759–83. Kahn, Jonathan. “Patenting Race.” (PDF) Nature Biotechnology 24, no. 11 (2006): 1349–51. Helmreich, Stefan. “Homo microbis: Species, Race, Sex, and the Human Microbiome.” Chapter 6 in Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond. Princeton University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780691164816. [Preview with Google Books] View: “Making, Unmaking, and Hacking Race and Data: Views from Anthropology.” May 12, 2021. Vimeo. |
| 5 | Biopolitics and Reproduction |
Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power over Life.” Part 5 in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. Translated from the French by Robert Hurley. Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698. Taussig, Karen-Sue, Rayna Rapp, and Deborah Heath. “Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of Self in the Age of Eugenics.” Chapter 3 in Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Edited by Alan H. Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee. University of California Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780520237933. [Preview with Google Books] Bharadwaj, Aditya. “The Other Mother: Supplementary Wombs and the Surrogate State in India.” In Reproductive Technologies as Global Form: Ethnographies of Knowledge, Practices, and Transnational Encounters. Edited by Michi Knecht, Maren Klotz, and Stefan Beck. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9783593391007. Yuill, Cassandra. “Reproductive Rights in the Time of Covid-19.” March 29, 2020. Somatosphere.net. |
| 6 | Biology for Sale |
Ritvo, Harriet. “Possessing Mother Nature: Genetic Capital in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” Chapter 20 in Early Modern Conceptions of Property. Edited by John Brewer and Susan Staves. Routledge, 1996. ISBN: 9780415153140. Landecker, Hannah. “Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science.” Science in Context 12, no. 1 (1999): 203–25. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in ‘Fresh’ Organs.” Chapter 9 in Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier. Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ISBN: 9781405123587. Banerjee, Dwaipayan. “From Internationalism to Nationalism: A New Vaccine Apartheid.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 41, no. 3 (2021): 312–17. |
| 7 | Health Disparities in the United States |
[P] “Introduction.” [Preview with Google Books] [P] Chapter 3: Mass Incarceration: On the Suspended Sentences of the Scott Sisters. [Preview with Google Books] [P] Chapter 4: Environmental Racism: Protecting GM’s Machines While Abandoning Flint’s People. [P] Chapter 6: Reproductive Injustice: Serena Williams’s Birth Story. [P] “Conclusion.” Wade, Lizzie. “COVID-19 Data on Native Americans is a ‘National Disgrace’.” Science, September 24, 2020. Huyser, Kimberly R., Aggie J. Yellow Horse, et al. “COVID-19 Pandemic and Indigenous Representation in Public Health Data.” American Journal of Public Health 111, S3 (2021): S208–14: |
| 8 | Remixing Organisms |
Franklin, Sarah. “Sex.” Chapter 1 in Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy. Duke University Press Books, 2007. ISBN: 9780822339205. [Preview with Google Books] [K] [Preview with Google Books] |
| 9 | Animals! |
Ritvo, Harriet. “Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons.” Representations 39 (1992): 1–22. Haraway, Donna J. “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936.” Chapter 3 in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Societies. Routledge, 1990. ISBN: 9780415902946. [Preview with Google Books] Mansfield, Barbara. “From Catfish to Organic Fish: Making Distinctions about Nature as Cultural Economic Practice.” Geoforum 34, no. 3 (2003): 329–42. Wanderer, Emily Mannix. “Biologies of Betrayal: Judas Goats and Sacrificial Mice on the Margins of Mexico.” BioSocieties 10, no. 1 (2015): 1–23. Kirksey, Eben. “The Emergence of Covid-19: A Multispecies Story.” (PDF) Anthropology Now 12 (2020): 11–16. |
| 10 | Synthetic Biology | [R] [Preview with Google Books] |
| 11 | Alien Ocean |
Helmreich, Stefan. “Introduction: Life at Sea.” In Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Dissolving the Tree of Life: Alien Kinship at Hydrothermal Vents.” Chapter 2 in Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Blue-Green Capitalism: Marine Biotechnology in Hawai‘i.” Chapter 3 in Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 12 | Class Conference | No readings assigned. |
| 13 | Class Conference | No readings assigned. |
