Technologies of Race Making

• Course Level: Graduate; undergraduate with permission
• Department: History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine, Anthropology, Sociology, Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, MAPSS
• Year: 2021-22
• Term: Autumn

• Th 9:30-10:50 AM
• KNOW 32012 / 22012 CRES 32012, SOCI 30325, HIPS 22012/CHSS 32012, ANTH 33336
• Iris Clever

This course considers the intersections between technology, science, and race. It explores how technologies have been developed and used to assign racial meaning to people's identities and bodies and how this has impacted economic, political, and social power structures. We will read studies relating to historical and present-day technologies and discuss topics such as racial science, phrenology, biometry, surveillance and policing, artificial intelligence and automation, and data production and reuse. A major theme that runs through the course is the practice of race-making, how biological race is enacted and made relevant in specific technological practices. Which assumptions and expectations about human variation are built into the technologies? What are the effects of its use in practice? How does race making configure into more durable forms, such as standards, databanks, and protocols? This course fulfills the elective requirement for a new MAPSS concentration on the Formation of Knowledge https://ifk.uchicago.edu/mapss/.

KNOW 22012: Technologies of Race Making

• Course Level: Graduate; undergraduate with permission
• Department: Sociology, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
• Year: 2020-21
• Term: Autumn

• Tue 1:00-4:00 PM Thu 2:00-4:00 PM
• CRES 32012, SOCI 30325

Iris Clever

This course considers the intersections between technology, science, and race. It explores how technologies have been developed and used to assign racial meaning to people's identities and bodies and how this has impacted economic, political, and social power structures. We will read studies relating to historical and present-day technologies and discuss topics such as racial science, phrenology, biometry, surveillance and policing, artificial intelligence and automation, and data production and reuse. A major theme that runs through the course is the practice of race-making, how biological race is enacted and made relevant in specific technological practices. Which assumptions and expectations about human variation are built into the technologies? What are the effects of its use in practice? How does race making configure into more durable forms, such as standards, databanks, and protocols? This class will be bi-modal, with in class and online options.

This course fulfills the elective requirement for a new MAPSS concentration on the Formation of Knowledge https://sifk.uchicago.edu/mapss/