The Anthropology of Biology
See description under subject 21A.303[J] .
Spring 2022
Topics
- Life Now
- Remixing Organisms
- Alien Ocean
- Class Conference
Readings
- [P] = Pollock, Anne. Sickening: Anti-Black Racism and Health Disparities in the United States . University of Minnesota Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781517911720.
- [R] = Roosth, Sophia. Synthetic: How Life Got Made . University of Chicago Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780226440460.
- Kay, Lily E. “In the Beginning Was the Word?: The Genetic Code and the Book of Life.” Chapter 15 in The Science Studies Reader . Edited by Mario Biagioli. Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415918688.
- Beer, Gillian. “Introduction.” In Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction . 3rd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780521743617.
- Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power over Life.” Part 5 in The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction . Translated from the French by Robert Hurley. Vintage, 1990. ISBN: 9780679724698.
- Bharadwaj, Aditya. “The Other Mother: Supplementary Wombs and the Surrogate State in India.” In Reproductive Technologies as Global Form: Ethnographies of Knowledge, Practices, and Transnational Encounters . Edited by Michi Knecht, Maren Klotz, and Stefan Beck. University of Chicago Press, 2012. ISBN: 9783593391007.
- Ritvo, Harriet. “Possessing Mother Nature: Genetic Capital in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” Chapter 20 in Early Modern Conceptions of Property . Edited by John Brewer and Susan Staves. Routledge, 1996. ISBN: 9780415153140.
- Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in ‘Fresh’ Organs.” Chapter 9 in Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems . Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier. Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ISBN: 9781405123587.
- [P] Chapter 4: Environmental Racism: Protecting GM’s Machines While Abandoning Flint’s People.
- [P] Chapter 6: Reproductive Injustice: Serena Williams’s Birth Story.
- SES #: 12 · TOPICS: Class Conference · READINGS: No readings assigned.
- SES #: 13 · TOPICS: Class Conference · READINGS: No readings assigned.
Fall 2013 · Anthropology of Biology
This course applies the tools of anthropology to examine biology in the age of genomics, biotechnological enterprise, biodiversity conservation, pharmaceutical bioprospecting, and synthetic biology. It examines such social concerns such as bioterrorism, genetic modification, and cloning. It offers an anthropological inquiry into how the substances and explanations of biology—ecological, organismic, cellular, molecular, genetic, informatic—are changing. It examines such artifacts as cell lines, biodiversity databases, and artificial life models, and using primary sources in biology, social studies of the life sciences, and literary and cinematic materials, and asks how we might answer Erwin Schrodinger's 1944 question, "What Is Life?" today.
Readings
- Kay, Lily. “In the Beginning Was the Word?: The Genetic Code and the Book of Life.” In The Science Studies Reader . Edited by Mario Biagioli. Routledge, 1999, pp. 224–33. ISBN: 9780415918688.
- Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power Over Life.” In The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction . Translated by Robert Hurley. Vintage, 1990, pp. 135–59. ISBN: 9780679724698.
- Rabinow, Paul. “Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality.” In Zone 6: Incorporations . Edited by Jonathan Crary, and Sanford Kwinter. Zone Books, 1992, pp. 234–52. ISBN: 9780942299298.
- Massey, Adrianne. “Crops, Genes, and Evolution.” Gastronomica 1, no. 3 (2001): 20–9.
- Gould, Stephen Jay. “Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View.” In Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History . W. W. Norton & Company, 1977, pp. 231–6. ISBN: 9780393064254.
- SES #: 12 · TOPICS: Class Conference · READINGS: No readings
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 21A.303[J] Prereq: None Acad Year 2027-2028: Not offered Acad Year 2028-2029: U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Spring 2022
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2013
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.