Biomedical Blackness

4.0 credits

This course examines the role of biomedical science in the construction of “Blackness” as a social, political, and “biological” phenomenon. Anchored by a variety of primary and secondary source material and critical texts, we will begin by delving into the history of racial ideology and its subsequent impact on the systemization of science throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, with a focus on the plantation as a site of knowledge production. We then move into topical foci, in which we interrogate, in great depth, the racial underpinnings of issues such as mental illness, racial statistics, “medical superbodies,” and sexual health and reproduction.