2021 Dean's Distinguished Lectureship Series

 Keynotes in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

2018 Social and Behavioral Sciences Dean's Distinguished Lectureship Series

Anthropology2017 SBS Anthropology

The Biological Evolution of Skin Color and the History of a Racialized Trait

Nina G. Jablonski
Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology
The Pennsylvania State University

3:30pm, Friday, April 2, 2021

Virtual

Human skin pigmentation is the production of evolution, and is related to the strength of ultraviolet radiation in the places where ancient humans and modern people have lived. In recent human history, skin color has been the primary physical criterion by which people have been classified into groups in the Western scientific tradition. Color-based race labels have mostly not been neutral descriptors of the trait, but have connoted meanings that influenced the perceptions of described groups. The mental constructs and stereotypes of color-based races have been durable, despite laws and education. In this lecture, Dr. Jablonski will explore how knowledge of the evolution of skin color and of the historical development of color-based race concepts can usefully inform education and society.

Anthropology2017 SBS Anthropology

Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Heroin in America

Helena Hansen
Professor and Chair of Research Theme in Translational
Social Science and Health Equity at UCLA’s
David Geffen School of Medicine

3:30 - 5:00pm, Friday, April 23, 2021

Virtual

This talk draws from Hansen's forthcoming book Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Heroin in America. Whiteout deploys ethnographic and historical analysis of pharmaceutical manufacturers, regulators, neuroscientists and addiction physicians to track technologies of whiteness in neuroscience, pharmaceutical development, regulation and marketing, that stem from drug policies that date back over a century. Based on a decade of participant observation, interviews and archival research, Whiteout updates theories of racial capitalism to reveal how biotechnological industries are driven by white consumption rather than black labor.