This course examines the role of science and medicine in the
construction(s) of "race," historically and in the present. Students
will interrogate the development of scientific authority over American
race relations as well as challenges to racial science, paying
particular attention to the intersection of race with other categories
of human difference, such as gender and sexuality. The readings will
focus primarily on the United States, in order to examine in depth
the  specific historical contexts and changing cultural politics at
play in  scientific understandings of racial difference.

Additional themes  include: gender norms and racial thought; the
production of scientific knowledge; biological determinism and
raced/gendered bodies; health  disparities; the racial coding of
disease; and the implications of  recent trends in genetic science.