Module: 1
Sponsoring Program: Graduate Division
Administrator: D'Anne Duncan

STUDY LIST INFORMATION
Course Number: GRAD 219A
Course Name: A Special Topics in Racism and Social Justice in Science
Units: 3
Grading Option: S/U
Course Director: D'Anne Duncan

MORE COURSE INFORMATION
Other Faculty: Bri Matusovsky
Dates: April 1-19
Campus: Virtual
Location: N/A
Schedule: M/W/F, 9:00am-10:30am
Minimum Class Size: 4
Maximum Class Size: 12

This mini-course on "Colonial Legacies and Experimentation in the Health Sciences" will draw on humanities and social sciences texts to consider the ways in which historical and contemporary mobilizations of categories of race have been central to medical and scientific understandings of who is (and is not) human. We will build on prior course material (Grad 202) to consider how the biological sciences interface with categories of classification including race, disability, gender, and human.  We will think beyond anthropocentric conceptions of science to also question what it means to treat ethically not only people but also other non-human living beings including biological specimens, animals, and environments. We will discuss the historical background and contemporary significance of these categories of difference, paying special attention to ideas of consent, pain, and agency as they are understood today.