In this episode we describe some of the early roots of eugenics and Erik describes his three-ingredient model for eugenics. TranscriptFile Size: 1009 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

In this episode we interview Erik Peterson about the book he recently released with fellow historian, Margaret Peacock, about the crazy pandemic year of 2020. Race features prominently throughout!
Some resources:
The website that accompanies the book: adhc.lib.ua.edu/pandemicbook/
The book: www.amazon.com/Deeper-Sickness-J…mic/dp/0807040290 TranscriptFile Size: 163 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

In this episode we respond to a listener question about our top 5 examples of scientific racism. Unfortunately, in the five years of this podcast, we’ve only discussed two of these people/topics, so we’ve got a lot of work to do to get up to speed. The transcript (below) includes references and resources for these topics. TranscriptFile Size: 154 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

At least since Stephen Jay Gould's 1981 classic Mismeasure of Man, Darwin has been characterized as a kindly anti-racist while Morton has been characterized as a founding father of scientific racism. We argue that the two men were much more alike in their views on both slavery and race. Great is whose sin? (transcript)File Size: 275 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

​In this episode, we talk with evolutionary biologist Joe Graves and biological anthropologist Alan Goodman about their roles as thought leaders on public education around race, racism, and science. They tell us about how they came to collaborate on their new book Racism not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, which tackles many of these issues. As promised, here are the links to the Wikipedia pages for Joe and for Alan so you can see some of their many accomplishments. Also as promised in the episode, here is Joe’s paper telling why Lewontin’s fallacy isn’t a fallacy, a key argument against biological races in humans. If you want more, you’ll have to listen to the episode and buy the book!  TranscriptFile Size: 149 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

Eugenics: the science and practice of promoting “good breeding” among humans. An early-20th-century movement so steeped in white supremacy that even some white people don’t count, much less people of color. Here we begin a series with more than you ever wanted to know about the sinister history of eugenics, including mass sterilization campaigns in the US and direct connections to the Holocaust. TranscriptFile Size: 139 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

TranscriptFile Size: 164 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File The idea that race is a biological reality has hung on longest and strongest in the parts of biological anthropology that deal with skeletal remains. In this episode we talk with two forensic anthropologists, Sean Tallman and Allysha Winburn, about how typological notions of race and ancestry have changed over time in this segment of the discipline. They have published a recent paper discussing this change (Tallman, S. D., Parr, N. M., & Winburn, A. P. (2021). Assumed Differences; Unquestioned Typologies: The Oversimplification of Race and Ancestry in Forensic Anthropology. Forensic Anthropology, Early View, 1-24. doi:https://doi.org/10.5744/fa.2020.0046).

​Racial equality is a new idea, right? Wrong! Meet Anténor Firmin, renegade Haitian intellectual of the late 19th century. He traveled all over the world, duked it out with elite scientific racists, hung out with Frederick Douglass, even ran for president -- but was exiled. Twice. On this episode, we discuss the Haitian anthropologist whose work is finally gaining the recognition it deserves, and why you've never heard of him. Joseph_Anténor_Firmin.pdfFile Size: 198 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

In this episode we finish our discussion of skin color with genetic and evolutionary models proposed throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. Spoiler alert: It's complicated! Script and Resources available hereFile Size: 413 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

Skin color is probably THE key thing we think of when we think about race these days, but it wasn't always that way. In this episode, we ask: where and when did skin color become the trait most associated with race? There's so much to talk about that we don't quite make it up to the present day--stay tuned for a sequel where we discuss contemporary understandings of skin color, genetics, and race! 
​The pdf below contains a heavily footnoted and referenced script for this episode. History of Skin Color, part 1File Size: 627 kbFile Type: pdfDownload File

What does it mean to “decolonize” teaching and scholarship? Why would we want to do that? And how? We take on these questions and more in a panel discussion with social scientists and established scholars of race Lance Gravlee, John L. Jackson Jr., Stephanie McClure, and Yolanda Moses. 

Some Resources:

• Blum, Susan D., and Alfie Kohn, eds.  (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). West Virginia University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/ungrading-9781949199826
• Harrison, Faye V., ed. (1991). Decolonizing anthropology: Moving further toward an anthropology for liberation. American Anthropological Association. https://www.powells.com/book/decolonizing-anthropology-2nd-edition-9780913167830
• hooks, bell. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. https://www.powells.com/book/teaching-to-transgress-education-as-the-practice-of-freedom-9780415908085
• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. (2003). "Anthropology and the savage slot: The poetics and politics of otherness." In Global transformations. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 7-28.
• Wendland, Claire L. (2010). A heart for the work: Journeys through an African medical school. University of Chicago Press. https://www.powells.com/book/a-heart-for-the-work-9780226893273
• The Boise State diversity course controversy: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/18/boise-state-suspends-diversity-course-1300-students

Select works our guests wanted to share with podcast listeners: 

• Gravlee, Clarence C. (2009). “How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 47–57.
• Gravlee, Lance. (2021) “How whiteness works: JAMA and the refusals of white supremacy.” Somatosphere. http://somatosphere.net/2021/how-whiteness-works.html/
• Jackson Jr, John L. (2013).  Thin description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Harvard University Press. https://www.powells.com/book/thin-description-9780674049666
• McClure, SM (2017). Symbolic body capital of an “other” kind: African American females as a bracketed subunit in female body valuation. In Anderson-Fye, EP and Brewis, A (eds.) Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture and Symbolic Body Capital. University of New Mexico Press.
• McClure, SM. (2020) Living Unembodiment: Physicality and body/self discontinuity among African American Adolescent Girls. Ethos, 48(1): 3-28.
• Mukhopadhyay, Carol C., Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses. (2013). How real is race? A sourcebook on race, culture, and biology, 2nd edition. Rowman & Littlefield. https://www.powells.com/book/how-real-is-race-9780759122734
• Rouse, Carolyn Moxley, John L. Jackson Jr, and Marla F. Frederick. (2016). Televised redemption: Black religious media and racial empowerment. NYU Press. https://www.powells.com/book/televised-redemption-9781479818174

A few additional resources on decolonizing:

• Harrison, Ira E., and Faye V. Harrison, eds. (1999). African-American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press. https://www.powells.com/book/african-american-pioneers-in-anthropology-9780252067365
• Harrison, Ira E., Deborah Johnson-Simon, and Erica Lorraine Williams, eds. (2018). The second generation of African American pioneers in anthropology. University of Illinois Press. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/the-second-generation-of-african-american-pioneers-in-anthropology-first-recipient-of-university-of-illinois-press-fund-for-anthropology-grant/
• Roy, Sumana (2021). “The problem with the postcolonial syllabus.” https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-problem-with-the-postcolonial-syllabus
• Stimson, Blake (2021). “Deneocolonize your syllabus”. https://nonsite.org/deneocolonize-your-syllabus/
• Decolonizing anthropology series from Savage Minds: https://savageminds.org/2016/04/19/decolonizing-anthropology/