Special Topics in Environmental Policy and Culture (390-0-1)

Topic

Eugenic Ecologies

Instructors

Madeline E. White

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L04: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

Eugenic Ecologies

For a brief period across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, human difference became a question of science, rather than culture. New disciplines seeking to categorize people abounded, such as criminology, anthropology, comparative anatomy, genetics, and most notoriously, eugenics.

This course charts the rise, fall, and resurgence of race science and scientific racism from the bible to biometrics. Along the way we will explore the connection between race, colonialism, and the environment. While Nazi Germany dominates cultural histories of eugenics, this was only a short period that developed from expansive programs originating in the United Kingdom and United States. As such, we will explore changing notions of race across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in a predominantly Anglo-American context, as well as the lasting legacy of eugenic thought in our contemporary culture.

The course is intended to challenge students not only on conceptions of difference and how these notions are enforced, but also the role of science as independent from cultural conversations. How have definitions of race changed throughout history? How did the scientific discovery of deep time, evolution, and genetics transform understandings of human difference? What colonial contexts contributed to new stratifications of societies along class, geography, and skin color? In what ways was science used to enforce race and class hierarchies? How was scientific racism used to promote social and political movements?

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration is reserved for Environmental Sciences majors, Earth and Planetary Sciences major/minors, Science in Human Culture majors and minors, and Environmental Policy and Culture majors and minors..