Wednesday, May 31, 2023

12:15-1:30 PM 

Humanities 1, Room 210

Thursday, June 01, 2023

12:15-1:45 PM 

Humanities 1, 210

On Wednesday, May 31 at 12:15pm in Humanities 1, rm. 210, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Juan Sebastian Gil Riaño, will present on “Stolen Evidence: Indigenous Children and Bio-historical narratives of the Western Hemisphere during the Cold War.” 

This talk examines how anthropologists and human biologists used abducted Indigenous children in South America as sources of evidence for a variety of bio-historical research projects during the Cold War. From 1930 to 1970, human scientists studying the Aché — a traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherer group in Paraguay — used evidence derived from measuring, bleeding, and observing children in the service of research projects concerned with reconstructing global human migrations in the Western hemisphere. Through studies of Aché children and families, scientists like the French naturalist Jehan Albert Vellard, the U.S. human geneticist Carleton Gajdusek, and the French structural anthropologists Pierre and Helen Clastres discerned ancient patterns of migration by considering the diffusion of cultural and linguistic traits, the process of genetic drift in populations, and the immunological effects of European conquest. Yet many of the Aché children used in these studies had been abducted and sold as servants to neighboring ranchers. By highlighting the use of stolen Indigenous children as research objects in Cold War human diversity research, my talk uncovers the enduring and violent colonial structures that made this knowledge possible as well as the ethical and legal protocols and forms of Indigenous resistance that emerged in response.

Then, on Thursday, June 01 at 12:15pm in Humanities 1, rm. 210, Dr. Gil Riaño will lead a reading group on “Indigenous Health and Infrastructures of Race.” Both activities will be in-person only.

In the past few decades, biomedical researchers and human biologists have called for more ethical guidelines for conducting fieldwork on Indigenous groups in South America. Included among these proposals is a call for greater “epidemiological surveillance” of remote Indigenous groups with the aim of reducing health disparities. This bioethical concern is driven by an understanding of colonial history, which presumes that without biomedical intervention Indigenous groups inevitably succumb to European diseases upon contact. In this reading group, we will explore how such bioethical narratives are themselves a product of a deep-seated colonial project that Daniel Nemser has called “the Infrastructures of Race.”

Juan Sebastian Gil Riaño is an Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania focusing on scientific conceptions of race, culture, and indigeneity in the twentieth century. 

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

6:00 – 8:00 pm 

Humanities 1, Room 210

Thursday, May 11, 2023

12:15 – 1:45 pm

Humanities 1, Room 210

On Wednesday, May 10 at 6:00 pm, we will host a talk entitled, “From Symptom to Story: Understanding an Epidemic of Kidney Disease in Central America” with Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Anna Barry-Jester. Then, on Thursday, May 11th at 12:15 a reading group.

What does it mean to construct a “cause” of disease? What is the primary source material we consult as we write the narrative of a new disease? When it comes to public health, how do we fairly and accurately reflect scientific evidence, personal experience, and community knowledge? In this talk, journalist Anna Maria Barry-Jester will use these questions to chart the history of a particular epidemic of chronic kidney disease that, since the early aughts, has been recognized as a leading cause of death in parts of Central America. In the two decades that followed, the global understanding of this condition has expanded to a growing list of communities, including war-torn parts of Sri Lanka, agrarian sectors of India and migrant guest workers from Nepal. Drawing from nearly 20 years of reporting — including interviews, photography, video, and scientific literature — Barry-Jester will explore the shifting narratives of the emergence of a disease and interrogate what becomes evidence and how it informs public understanding of disease and its causes.

Anna Barry-Jester is a public health reporter with ProPublica. Previously, she was a senior correspondent covering public health at Kaiser Health News. Her series “Underfunded and Under Threat,” with colleagues at KHN and The Associated Press, investigated how chronically underfunded public health departments buckled under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic. The project won awards from the Online News Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her reporting on harassment and menacing threats endured by public health officials was the basis of an episode of “This American Life,” and PEN America later awarded its PEN/Benenson Courage Award to the officials who she profiled. Barry-Jester has lived and worked in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where she has reported, photographed and filmed stories in more than a dozen countries. She was a writer at FiveThirtyEight and a producer at Univision and ABC News. More information can be found on her website.

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

6:00 – 7:30 pm

Cowell Ranch Hay Barn (free and open to the public, register)

Thursday, April 20, 2023

12:00 – 1:30 pm

Humanities 1, room 210

SAVE-the-DATEs! On Wednesday, April 19 at 6:00 pm, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Karina L. Walters, will present a campus-wide talk at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. It is free and open to the public, though we do ask people to pre-register. Then, on Thursday, April 20, we will host a reading group at 12:00pm in Humanities 1, room 210.

Throughout history, settler colonialism has endeavored to erase the lived experiences and histories of American Indian and Alaska Native Peoples. Yet, Indigenous populations, particularly Indigenous women, remain strong and resilient pillars of communities. Oftentimes these [her]stories are missed in public health initiatives as a result of settler colonialism’s perpetual drive to erase and silence. In this talk, Dr. Walters will explore the latest advances in designing culturally derived, Indigenist health promotion interventions among American Indian and Alaska Native women. The talk will describe the indigenist methodological innovations utilized in the NIH funded Yappalli Choctaw Road to Health, a culturally focused, land-based obesity and substance abuse prevention program as well as the national multi-site Honor Project Two-Spirit Health Study. Consistent with tribal systems of knowledge, both studies illustrate the importance of developing culturally derived health promotion interventions rooted in Indigenist thoughtways and land-based practices to promote Indigenous thrivance and community well-being.

Dr. Karina L. Walters (MSW, PhD) is the recently appointed Director of the Tribal Health Research Office at the National Institute of Health. She is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a Katherine Hall Chambers University Professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, and an adjunct Professor in the Department of Global Health, School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI) at the University of Washington. Dr. Walters is world renowned for her expertise in developing behavioral and multi-level health interventions steeped in culture to activate health-promoting behaviors. She has written landmark papers on traumatic stress and health, historical and intergenerational trauma, and originated the Indigenist Stress-Coping model. She has led 22 NIH-funded studies, is one of the leading American Indian scientists in the country, and is only one of two American Indians (and the only Native woman) ever invited to deliver the prestigious Director’s lecture to the Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) at the NIH. She is the first American Indian Fellow inductee into the American Academy of Social Welfare and Social Work (AASWSW).

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

Tuesday, March 07, 2023

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

University Center

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Humanities 1, 210

On Tuesday, March 7 at 5:00pm at the University Center, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Wangui Muigai, will present a talk titled, “Fighting for Life: Race and the Limits of Infant Survival.” Then, on Wednesday, March 8, we will host a reading group with Muigai at 4:00pm. Both activities will be in-person only.

Join Dr. Wangui Muigai as she charts the history of one of the most enduring health disparities in America, the racial gap in infant survival. Drawing on a trove of historical records and archival materials, this talk follows Black families as they have journeyed from birthing rooms to burial grounds, fighting for the ability to birth and nurture healthy babies. In charting the historical landscapes of Black infant death across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Dr. Muigai will examine the role of cultural practices, medical theories, and communal initiatives to explain and address the causes of Black infant death. The talk considers the legacy of these ideas and efforts in ongoing struggles to preserve Black life.

Wangui Muigai is an Assistant Professor at Brandeis University in the departments of History, African & African American Studies and the Health: Science, Society, and Policy Program. Dr. Muigai was named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and selected as a Class of 2025 Fellow in the Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics. Her first book, on the history of infant death in the Black experience, is forthcoming with Harvard University Press.

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

Friday, January 27, 2023

12:15 pm – 1:30 pm

Humanities 1, 210

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Humanities 1, 210

SAVE-the-DATEs! On Friday, January 27 at 12:15pm, we will host a reading group with Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, in Humanities 1, 210. Then, on Wednesday, February 1, Rajan will present a talk titled, “Ethnographic Trans-formations: Cases, Life Histories, and Other Entanglements of Emergent Research,” at 4:00pm.

This talk is the presentation of an emergent research trajectory. Drawing upon an imaginary of “multisituated” research design and practice, I elaborate the (often contingent and serendipitous) development of my recent work in South Africa, which includes a research project on health and constitutionalism and a teaching- and performance-based collaboration on the politics of breath. I am still wrestling with how to structure both, how they come together and diverge, their different conceptual modalities and political stakes. This includes a consideration of the stakes of legal archival research and life-history interviews in the context of contemporary and emergent research and political situations, as well as of thinking questions of ethnographic form in concert with others who are invested in considerations of literary or musical form. How to think about transformations of research practice in the context of unsettled and unresolved macro-political transformations in uncertain and fragile times? Why might it matter?

Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at University of Chicago.

The “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” seminar series is supported by the Mellon Foundation, administered by The Humanities Institute (THI) at UC Santa Cruz, and presented in partnership with the Science & Justice Research Center. Learn more in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine” project website.

Wednesday, November 02, 2022

4:00-5:30 PM 

Zoom only (Registrations: 11/02 Presentation, 11/07 Reading Group)

On Wednesday, November 02 at 4:00pm, Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Alberto Ortiz-Diaz, will present online over Zoom (register). Then, on Monday, November 07, we will host a reading group at 4:00pm over Zoom (register).

More on the seminar can be found in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the project website.

“Carceral Care: Health Professionals and the Living Dead in Colonial Puerto Rico’s Sanitary City, 1920s-1940s”

Using an array of primary sources, this talk explores the early history of the Río Piedras sanitary city or medical corridor, a transnationally and imperially inspired built environment and complex of welfare institutions (a tuberculosis hospital, an insane asylum, and a penitentiary) constructed and consolidated on the margins of San Juan by Puerto Rico’s colonial-populist state between the 1920s and 40s. Within and across these institutional spaces, health professionals contributed to the production of medicalized scientific knowledge and cared for and socially regulated racialized, pathologized Puerto Ricans. Penitentiary “living dead” (incarcerated people), in particular, were subjected to research and received treatment, but also provided health labor that put them at risk while powering the sanitary city and nurturing its inhabitants. Crucially, however, some prisoners managed to exploit the unthinkable openness of the complex, revealing in the process that the living dead could only be buried alive for so long.

Alberto Ortiz Díaz is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington, and currently a Larson Fellow at the Kluge Center, Library of Congress. His first book, Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in March 2023.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

12:15-1:30 PM 

Humanities 1, Room 210 (in person only)

On Tuesday, October 18, the Inaugural Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Tahir Amin, will present at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center (320 Cedar St) in downtown Santa Cruz (tickets, map) on Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines. Then, on Wednesday, October 19, the Center for Cultural Studies will host Amin from 12:15-1:30pm in Humanities 1, room 210 on Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health.

More on the seminar can be found in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the project website.

Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health

With billions of people in low-income countries still without Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics, this pandemic has exposed the neo-colonial structures of the political economy of intellectual property system and the World Trade Organization (WTO). This talk will delve into an often overlooked history of  how the WTO TRIPS Agreement came into existence and the impact it has had on the global South over the 27 years it has been in force – and how it will impact future pandemic preparedness and climate change.

Tahir Amin, LL.B., Dip. LP., is a founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit organisation working to address structural inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. He has over 25 years of experience in intellectual property (IP) law, during which he has practised with two of the leading IP law firms in the United Kingdom and served as IP Counsel for multinational corporations. His work focuses on re-shaping IP laws and the related global political economy to better serve the public interest, by changing the structural power dynamics that allow health and economic inequities to persist.

Amin and I-MAK have also put out a 10 point plan for the Biden-Harris administration to bring equity into the patent system, and their work is highlighted in the New York Times Editorial Board’s recent endorsement of patent reform. He is a former Harvard Medical School Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and TED Fellow. Amin has served as legal advisor/consultant to many international groups, including the European Patent Office and World Health Organization, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on intellectual property and unsustainable drug price.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

7:00-8:30 PM (tickets)

Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320 Cedar St, Santa Cruz (map)

On Tuesday, October 18, the Inaugural Sawyer Seminar Speaker, Tahir Amin, will present at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center (320 Cedar St) in downtown Santa Cruz on Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines. Then, on Wednesday, October 19, the Center for Cultural Studies will host an in person reading group from 12:15-1:30pm in Humanities 1, room 210 on Technological Colonialism: The Political Economy of Innovation and Global Health.

More on the seminar can be found in this campus news article: UC Santa Cruz receives Mellon Foundation humanities grant to investigate race, biomedicine and on the project website.

Intellectual Property Wars: The Battle for Access to Medicines

The globalization of intellectual property in the 80s has coincided with some of the deadliest pandemics, epidemics and outbreaks, from HIV, hepatitis C, SARS, and recently COVID -19. Tahir Amin will take us through his and his organization’s journey over two decades fighting the ever growing intellectual property systems being pushed by the US, EU and their pharmaceutical companies that are blocking affordable access to medicines for billions of low income populations around the world.

Tahir Amin, LL.B., Dip. LP., is a founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit organisation working to address structural inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. He has over 25 years of experience in intellectual property (IP) law, during which he has practised with two of the leading IP law firms in the United Kingdom and served as IP Counsel for multinational corporations. His work focuses on re-shaping IP laws and the related global political economy to better serve the public interest, by changing the structural power dynamics that allow health and economic inequities to persist.

Amin and I-MAK have also put out a 10 point plan for the Biden-Harris administration to bring equity into the patent system, and their work is highlighted in the New York Times Editorial Board’s recent endorsement of patent reform. He is a former Harvard Medical School Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and TED Fellow. Amin has served as legal advisor/consultant to many international groups, including the European Patent Office and World Health Organization, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on intellectual property and unsustainable drug price.