Conference: Why does the racial and genetic discourse on the Jewish people re-emerge in the 21st Century?

In the early 21st century, we witness a re-emergence of discourses on Jews as a race in both the social sciences and in the fields of medicine and genetics. These discourses embody contradictory arguments: whereas some try to undermine the religious and Zionist ideologies, which argue that Jews are historically one people, others attempt to anchor the claim of Jewish particular genetic and racial commonalities using
medicine and genetics. Our workshop aims to examine this new phenomenon
by bringing together social and political scientists, historians of science and scholars from Jewish studies.

Schedule

Friday, April 12, 2013

Welcome (17.30)
Michael Hagner, Zürich
Rakefet Zalashik, New York/ Heidelberg

Panel 1 (17.45-19.45, Apéro)
Marianne Sommer, Lucerne
Making History: Practices of Identification in the Genographic Network

Keith Wailoo, Princeton
How Diseases Become Racial: Genetics, Cancer, and the Transformation of Jewish Identity

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Panel 2 (10-12.30)

Veronika Lipphardt, Berlin
Jews, Roma, Basks, Laps: How the Concept of 'Isolates' Helped to Transfer Race Science Into Late 20th Century Human Population Genetics

Yulia Egorova, Durham
The Genetics of Emerging Judaisms: Power and Agency in DNA Research

Panel 3 (14-17.30)

Nadav Davidovitch, Beer Sheva
From Tay Sachs to Progressive Cerebellocerebral Atrophy: Broadening the 'Ethnification' discussion on Jewish Genetic Screening

Petter Hellström, Uppsala
Genetic lineages: Y Chromosomes, Mitochondrial DNA, and the Quest for Jewish Genes

Tino Plümecke, Frankfurt/M
Old Differences in New PCR Tubes? What is New in the New Science of Race

Final Comment (17.30-18.30)
Carola Sachse, Vienna

Venue

For further informations contact