Event



PRSS SPRING SYMPOSIUM | Ordering the Human: Global Science and Racial Reason

- | | Location: Perry World House

Please register at: https://orderingthehuman.eventbrite.com

Live stream link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZbKZSTYc7_N8dk5aEs19WA/live

Ordering the Human: 

Global Science and Racial Reason 

University of Pennsylvania | Perry World House

Thursday, April 12 | 8:15am - 5:15pm 

Understanding and categorizing racial difference have significant implications for individuals across the globe. Historically, these classifications have been the foundational logics upon which violence is justified and perpetrated. Purportedly “universal” and “stable” racial categories continue to affect health outcomes and resource allocation globally as they are incorporated and reinscribed in scientific and biomedical research. By bringing together an international group of biological and social scientists working on these questions in various national and political contexts, the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society (PRSS) aims to uncover how race as a unit of analysis is defined, operationalized, and reconstituted through scientific and biomedical practices. As the legacies of racial divisions continue to influence and circumscribe lives, this symposium will provide a vital starting point to systematically and synthetically analyze the role of racial science and to strategize possible ways out of the naturalization of racial categories.

8:30 – 9:00  Breakfast

9:00 – 9:15  Welcome and Introductions

Wendell Pritchett (Penn)

Dorothy Roberts (Penn)

9:15 – 10:45  Panel 1 | Individuals and Composites

Amade M'charek (University of Amsterdam - Netherlands)

Carolyn Roberts (Yale)

Shirley Sun (Nanyang Technical University - Singapore)

Commentator: Pamela Sankar (Penn)

10:45 – 11:00  Break

11:00 – 12:30  Panel 2 | Purity and Mixture

Projit Bihari Mukharji (Penn)

Ricardo Santos Ventura (FIOCRUZ - Brazil)

João Luis Bastos (UFSC - Brazil)

Vivette García Deister (UNAM - Mexico)

Commentator: Sebastián Gil-Riaño (Penn)

12:30 – 1:30  Lunch

1:30 – 3:00  Panel 3 | Stability and Circulation

Julie Ringelheim (UCLouvain - Belgium)

Ambroise Wonkam (University of Cape Town – South Africa)

Pablo Gómez (UW-Madison)

Commentator: Michael Hanchard (Penn)

3:00 – 3:30  Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00 Panel 4 | Past and Promise

Kristin Peterson (UC-Irvine)

David Jones (Harvard)

Isaac Warbrick (Auckland Technical University – New Zealand)

Commentator: Evelynn Hammonds (Harvard)

5:00 – 5:15  Closing