University of California, San Francisco Spring 2024
GRAD 219: Special Topics in Race and Racism in Science
“Colonial Legacies and Experimentation in the Health Sciences”
Monday, April 1 - Friday, April 19, 2024
MWF, 9 – 10:30am PST
Course Zoom link: https://ucsf.zoom.us/j/92150288757?pwd=bkRiK011Y3F5QWRaWFArNHlIWm5XUT09
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 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 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 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.
We will read texts which reference medical anthropology, de-colonial and post-colonial theory, critical race theory, political ecology, science and technology studies (STS), and Indigenous STS. In week 1, "Consent and Non-Consent: Colonization and Experimentation," we will read historical and contemporary sources about how colonial logics of extraction and ownership were foundational to contemporary logics of consent and experimentation. In week 2, "Cycles of Violence and Healing in Western Science," we will question the ways in which these logics continue to inform the ethics of the health sciences and medicine in the Western world. In week 3, "Inspiration from Post-Colonial Presents, Imagination of Anti-Colonial Futures," we will discuss contemporary critiques of Western science, and related responses and interventions.