Event Date
The study of ancient DNA has exploded over the last decade; yet, such research has too often reinforced the notion that race is both biological and unchanging across time. This talk underlines the dangers of such trends by examining both the appropriation of aDNA research by the far right and also placing the rise of aDNA research in the broader context of the disturbing resurgence of race science.
Denise Eileen McCoskey is a Professor of classics and affiliate in Black World Studies at Miami University (Ohio). She is the author of Race: Antiquity and Its Legacy (OUP 2012) and editor of A Cultural History of Race in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2022). She is currently collaborating on an edited volume entitled Abusing Antiquity? Classics and the Contemporary Far Right with Helen Roche and continuing work on a longer-term project exploring the role of eugenics in early twentieth-century American classical scholarship.
