TOPICS: SCIENCE, SOCIETY & HUMAN ORIGINS in Spring 2022 (HI2091D)

All the available evidence indicates that our species, Homo sapiens, emerged in Africa, and then migrated across the planet, where its DNA occasionally intermingled with that of other human species which then disappeared, leaving Homo sapiens as the only human species, the only human race, on the planet. Why then do we talk about “race” as if something fundamental distinguished, for instance, an individual of one skin color from an individual of a different skin color? Recent technological innovations have radically altered our understanding of human origins, allowing science to add fascinating pieces to the puzzle of our common evolutionary history. Many of those pieces replace prior “racial” constructions of alterity, sometimes erroneously influenced by cultural paradigms and sometimes intentionally articulated to achieve political/economic objectives. Typically these involve the manipulation of “science” to create distinctions and hierarchies among different groups of people in order to dehumanize and isolate them, opening the door to the ultimate dehumanization by classification, genocide.

Students that have taken Science, Society and Human Origins as their FirstBridge can not take this course.