Gustav Mützel's "Principal Types of Mankind (After Huxley)," 1893
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Richard Wetzell provides an analysis of "racial science" in Germany during the early years of the Nazi regime, showing us how medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and human geneticists wielded competing theories of race in order to influence public policy and maintain their professional status.
Andy Evans discusses the history of racial science in Germany before the Nazi era, describing how Germany's nineteenth-century liberal anthropological tradition transmogrified into a hierarchical and racist "science" in the early part of the twentieth century.
Stephen Kenny scrutinizes the career of surgeon Rudolph Matas and puts his life and work in the context of slavery, segregation, and racialized medicine in the U.S. South in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Warwick Anderson discusses his investigations into the development of racial science in the Global South and the fabrication of whiteness as a "strategy of authority."
Christa Kuljian shares her research on the field of paleoanthropology in South Africa and how ideas about racial hierarchies influenced its founding and development.
Elise Burton analyzes the development of genetics, racial science, and race concepts in the contemporary Middle East.
Sadiah Qureshi recounts the history of the exhibition of displayed peoples in nineteenth-century Britain, and how these shows contributed to the formation of anthropology.
Sebastián Gil-Riaño examines how scientific articulations of human diversity have been used to both legitimize and confront notions of race and racism in the modern world.
Rana Hogarth talks about how white physicians "medicalized" blackness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and how African-Americans pushed back against this endeavor.
John Jackson discusses the legacy of nineteenth-century racial science on twentieth-century scientific investigation, the challenge to racial science made by population genetics and anthropology, and the ways in which the pseudoscience of race continues to inform twenty-first century debates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insights from the Collections

The Consortium's collections provide many opportunities to learn more about the history of science, race, and racism.

Our cross-institutional search tool allows researchers to investigate materials across multiple institutions from a single interface. With millions of catalog records of rare books and manuscripts and thousands of finding aids, the Consortium's search hub offers scholars and the public the ability to identify and locate relevant materials.

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Some archival materials related to this topic include:

Rudolf Virchow Medical Society Records, New York Academy of Medicine
L.C. Dunn Papers, American Philosophical Society
Ashley Montagu Papers, American Philosophical Society
Samuel George Morton Papers, American Philosophical Society
Raymond Pearl Papers, American Philosophical Society 
Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, American Philosophical Society 
Franz Boas Papers, American Philosophical Society 
Ernst Mayr Papers, American Philosophical Society
Victor George Heiser Papers, American Philosophical Society 
Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia
Carleton Stevens Coon Papers, Smithsonian Institution
Ernest Hooton Papers, Harvard University 

Other Web resources:

The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism, by Ramin Skibba; Smithsonian Magazine
Racism in Science: The Taint that Lingers, by Robin Nelson; Nature 
How to Fight Racism Using Science, by Adam Rutherford; The Guardian

Learn more about our speakers:

Richard Wetzell
Andy Evans
Warwick Anderson
Christa Kuljian
Elise Burton
Sadiah Qureshi
Sebastián Gil-Riaño
Rana Hogarth
John Jackson

Related publications from our speakers:

Eugenics, Racial Science, and Nazi Biopolitics: Was There a Genesis of the 'Final Solution' from the Spirit of Science?, by Richard F. Wetzell, in Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany, edited by Devin O. Pendas, Mark Roseman, and Richard F. Wetzell; Cambridge University Press, 2017. 
Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany, by Andrew D. Evans; University of Chicago Press, 2010. 
From Racial Types to Aboriginal Clines: The Illustrative Career of Joseph B. Birdsell, by Warwick Anderson; Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 50(5), 2020. 
Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines, by Warwick Anderson; Duke University Press, 2006. 
The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia, by Warwick Anderson; Melbourne University Press, 2002. 
Darwin's Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins, by Christa Kuljian; Jacana Media, 2016. 
Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity, by Elise K. Burton; Stanford University Press, 2021. 
Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Sadiah Qureshi; University of Chicago Press, 2011. 
Relocating Anti-Racist Science: The 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race and Economic Development in the Global South, by Sebastián Gil-Riaño; British Journal for the History of Science 51(2), 2018. 
Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840, by Rana A. Hogarth; UNC Press, 2017. 
Darwinism, Democracy, and Race: American Anthropology and Evolutionary Biology in the Twentieth Century, by John P. Jackson, Jr., and David J. Depew; Routledge, 2017. 
Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case Against Brown v. Board of Education, by John P. Jackson, Jr.; NYU Press, 2005. 
Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case Against Segregation, by John P. Jackson, Jr.; NYU Press, 2001. 

See also recent work from our fellows:

Nazi Entanglement: Pascual Jordan, Quantum Mechanics, and the Legacy of the Third Reich, Ryan Dahn
Human Remainders: The Lost Century of the Samuel George Morton Collection, Paul Mitchell
Between Cope and Osborn: The Role of American Biological Discourse on the Public Debate on Evolution, David Ceccarelli
Colored Insane: Slavery, Asylums, and Mental Illness in the 19th Century, Diana Louis
Abolition and the Making of Scientific Racism in the Anglo-Atlantic, Sean M. Smith
By Their Locks You Shall Know Them: Race, Science, and Hair in the Nineteenth Century, Timothy Minella
The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880, by Wendy Gonaver; UNC, 2019. 
Monstrous Childbirth: Concepts of Race and Defective Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Science, Medicine, and Law, Miriam Rich
Treating the Black Body: Race and Medicine in American Culture, 1800-1861, Christopher Willoughby

Related forums and podcasts:

Black Maternal Health: Historical and Reproductive Justice Reckonings
Immortal Life: The Promises and Perils of Biobanking and the Genetic Archive
Materials of the Mind, an interview with James Poskett
The Lost White Tribe, an interview with Michael Robinson
Bone Rooms, an interview with Sam Redman