Medicine, Race, and Ethnicity

Conference Course for Undergraduates, Fall 1994
Prof. Warwick Anderson, History of Science, Harvard
University

This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions
of categories of race and ethnicity since 1800. We will
place the development of racial theories of disease in a
broad social and political context - and, in particular,
explain the medical salience of race in the setting of
slavery and colonialism. While the North American context is
emphasized, we will also discuss developments in the British
and French empires, and within Europe. You should note, too,
that exigencies of scheduling have meant that the focus of
this course is more on the invention of racial categories
than on racism in the actual delivery of health care --
though these subjects are not (and should not be) entirely
separated.

Assessment will be as follows:

Participation in sections 10%
Two class papers 20%
Midterm exam 30%
Final take-home exam 40%

September 20
Introduction

September 22
Race before 1800; Exploration

September 27
Race and slavery

September 29
The Enlightenment and Racial Classification; Great Chain
of Being

Section
Richard Cooper, "A note on the biological concept of
race, "American Heart Journal108 (1984):
715-22.
Doris Y. Wilkinson and Gary King, " Conceptual and
methodological issues in the use of race as a
variable," in David P. Willis, ed., Health
Politics and Black Americans(New Brunswick:
Transaction, 1989), pp. 56-71.
Newton, G. Osborne and Marvin D. Feit, " The use of
race in medical research," JAMA267 (1992):
275-79.
"The uses of race in medical research: [Letters]"
JAMA267 (1992): 3150-51.
Michael Banton, "The Idiom of Race: a critique of
presentism," Research in Race and Ethnic
Relations2 (1980): 21-42.

October 4
Monogenism; Blumenbach, Cuvier, Prichard, Lawrence

October 6
Polygenism; Knot, Hunt

Section
Blumenbach, "Observations on the bodily conformation
and mental capacity of the Negroes,"
Philosophical Magazine3 (1799): 141-46.
Alexander von Humboldt, Cosmos(London: John Murray,
1859, vol. 1, pp. 350-357.
James Cowled Prichard, Researches into the Physical
History of Man([1813] London, 1851), vol. 1, pp.
138-160.
William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the
Natural History of Man(London, 1822), pp. 411-34.
James Hunt, On the Negro's Place in Nature(New York:
Van Evrie, Horton and Co., 1864).

October 13
American School of Ethnology; Morton, Gliddon, Nott,
Cartrigtht

Section
Josiah Nott, Two Lectures on the Natural History of
Caucasian and Negro Races(Mobile: Dade and Thompson,
1844), pp. 1-14.
Frederick Douglass, The Claims of the Negro,
Ethnologically Considered.(Rochester: Lee, Mann and
Co, 1854).
John S. Haller, "The Negro and the southern physician:
a study of medical and racial attitudes, 100-160,"
Medical History16 (1972): 238-53.
James D. Guillory, "The pro-slavery arguments of Dr.
Samuel Cartright." Louisiana History9
(1968): 209-227.

Oct. 18
Measurement; Phrenology and Pigmentation

Oct 20
Racial Competition; Darwin, Wallace, Huxley

Section
Lucien Carr, Notes on the Crania of New England
Indians.(Boston, 1880).
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man.(New York:
W.W. Norton and Co., 1981), pp. 30-72.
Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A
Fragment.(Philadelphia: Lee and Blanchard, 1850),
pp. 154-63.
Sander Gilman, "The Jewish nose: are Jews white? Or,
the history of the nose job,: The Jew's Body.(New
York: Rutledge, 1991), pp. 169-93.

Oct. 25
Human Acclimatization

Oct. 27
Racial Immunities

Section
Charles Darwin, Descent of Man.(London, 1871) pp.
182-221.
Alfred Russel Wallace, :Development of human races,"
Journal of the Anthropology Society2 (1864):
158-70.
T.H. Huxley, "Emancipation black and white
[1865]," in Science and Education(New York,
1896), pp.64-71.
Frederick Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the
America Negro.(New York: Macmillan, 1896), pp. 1-32.

Nov. 1
Race and Venereal Disease

Nov. 3
Race and Tuberculosis

Section
John S. Haller, "The physician versus the Negro:
medical and anthropological concepts of race in the late
nineteenth century," Bulletin of the History of
Medicine44 (1970): 154-67.
Thomas W. Murrell, "Syphilis and the American Negro: a
medico-sociological study," JAMA54 (1910):
846-49.
Allan Brandt, "Racism and Research: The Case of the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study," Hastings Center
Report8 (1978): 21-29.
Evelynn Hammonds, "Race, Sex, AIDS: The Construction of
'Other'," Radical America20 (1987): 55-62.

Nov. 8
Asians

Nov. 10
Mid-Term Exam

Optional Reading
Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The
American Image of the Chinese, 1785-1882.(Berkeley:
UC Press, 1969), pp. 83-112.

Nov. 15
Physical Anthropology; Beddoe, Haddon, Ripley, Keith

Nov. 17
Degeneration and the War of the Races; Nordau, Lankester,
Chamberlain, Grant

Section
John Beddoe, "Color and Race," Journal of the
Anthropology Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland35 (1905): 219-50.
Arthur Keith, "Presidential Address: On Certain Factors
in the Evolution of the Races," Journal of the
Royal Anthropology Institute64 (1916): 10-33.
George W. Stocking, Jr., "The Persistence of Polygenist
thought in Post-Darwinian Anthropology, ' in his
Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays in the History of
Anthropology(New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 42-64.
Richard Soloway, "Counting the Degenerates: The
statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian
England," Journal of Contemporary History17
(1982): 137-64.

Nov. 22
British Eugenics; Galton, Pearson

Nov. 24
American Eugenics; Davenport

Optional Section
Francis Galton, "Hereditary Talent and Character,"
Macmillan's Magazine12 (1865): 318-27.
Francis Galton, "The Comparative Worth of Different
Races," in Hereditary Genius(London, 1982),
pp. 392-404.
C.B. Davenport, "Effects of Race Intermingling, "
Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society130 (1917): 364-68.

Nov. 29
Nazi Race in Scienceence

Dec. 1
Cultural Anthropology and Environmentalism; Boas

Section
Paul Weindling, "Nazi Racial Hygiene, " in
Health, Race and German Politics Between National
Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945.(Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 489-541.
Franz Boas, "Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendents
of Immigrants," in his Race, Language and
Culture([1922] New York: Free Press, 1966), pp.
60-75.
Edward Beardsley, "The American Scientist as Social
Activist: Franz Boas, Burt G. Wilder, and the Cause of
Racial Justice," Isis64 (1973): 50-66.
"Mice and Men in Edinburgh: Reports from the genetics
conference," Journal of Heredity30 (1939):
371-74.
Gunnar Myrdal, "The American Definition of Negro,"
in An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy(New York: Harper and Bros, 1944), vol. 1,
pp. 113-117, and vol. 2, pp. 1198-99.

Dec 6
Ethnicity; Park, Hogben, Huxley

Dec. 8
On Human Diversity

Section
W.E.B. DuBois, Conservation of Races, Occasional
Papers No. 2 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), pp. 5-15.
Anthony Appiah, "The Uncompleted Argument: DuBois and
the Illusion of Race," Critical Inquiry12
(1986): 21-37.
Richard Lewontin, S. Rose and L. Kamin, "The Politics
of Biological Determinism, " in Not in Our
Genes(Pantheon, 1984), pp. 17-36.

Dec. 13
Guest Lecturer Anthony Appiah

Dec. 14
Conclusion; Strategies of Identity