Module: 2
Sponsoring Program: Graduate Division
Administrator: D'Anne Duncan
STUDY LIST INFORMATION
Course Number: GRAD 219
Course Name: Research on Racism in Science: Race and Biomedicine: Knowing and Living the Body
Units: 3
Grading Option: S/U
Course Director: D'Anne Duncan
Co-Directors: Jeremey Gottlieb
Other Faculty: Deren Pulley
MORE COURSE INFORMATION
Dates: Monday, April 20 - Friday, May, 8, 2026
Campus: Zoom
Schedule: M/W, 2-5pm (PT)
Minimum Class Size: 4
Maximum Class Size: 12
Race and Biomedicine: Knowing and Living the Body" is a mini-course dedicated to exploring the body as a site of scientific knowledge production, medical practice, and lived possibilities. How do scientific methods of knowing the body condition our modes of being in the world? Moreover, how is race and racialization embedded within the fabric of scientific knowledge and medical practice? Together, we will approach the entwined legacies of racism and colonialism within biomedicine by asking how disciplines such as genomics, immunology, microbial science, surgery, and population science contributed to the colonial political project by reinscribing racialized and social hierarchies within the body itself. From academic writing to novels and memoirs, this mini-course will contend with both the limits and possibilities of healing such wounds through the health sciences. By the end of the mini-course, students will be familiar with concepts such as embodiment, racialization, biopower, biopolitics, decolonization, and repair. It will provide basic science students with a critical toolkit to analyze contemporary knowledge production at the intersection of medical technologies, the body, and race.