NYAS Lecture 10/29: Sick of Race: How Racism Harms Health and Misleads Medicine

As October wraps up we’re thrilled to announce another great installment of the New York Academy of Sciences lecture series on October 29th at 5:45 PM at its new location, Roosevelt House, 47-49 E 65th St, New York, NY 10065. Clarence C. Gravlee, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida will be presenting, “Sick of Race: How Racism Harms Health and Misleads Medicine”. Ida Susser, professor of anthropology at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center will act as discussant.

Please note: the lecture begins at 6:30 PM, and while the event is free to attend pre-registration is required for entry into the building. Early registration is strongly recommended, since seating is limited. For the buffet supper, registration is also required. If you will be registering for an event for the first time, the New York Academy of Sciences will ask you first to set up a user account with them. Registration is free and does not require divulging personal or financial information.

Again please note that the NYAS lecture series is no longer being held at the offices of The Wenner-Gren Foundation. All talks in this series take place at Roosevelt House, 47-49 E 65th St, New York, NY 10065.

Social scientists commonly assert that race is a cultural construct, not a biological reality. This refrain is correct in spirit, but it has proven to be an ineffective response to the persistence of racial-genetic determinism in medicine, science, and everyday life. What’s more, it creates a blind spot: deflecting attention away from the biological consequences of cultural constructs like race. We will explore how hidden assumptions about race, genes, and biology infect contemporary medicine and how integrating methods from the social and biological sciences clarifies the health effects of systemic racism.

About the Speakers:

Clarence C. Gravlee is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida. The central goal of Dr. Gravlee’s research is to identify and address the social and cultural causes of racial inequities in health. His work is grounded in a biocultural approach to health and human development, drawing on methods from the social and biological sciences. His current primary project, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on the health effects of racism among African Americans in Tallahassee, FL. Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, the project integrates conventional ethnographic methods, formal social network analysis, and epidemiologic methods. Gravlee has co-edited The Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology with Russell Bernard, now in its second edition, and has co-authored numerous articles.

Ida Susser is professor of anthropology at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center and has conducted ethnographic research in the U.S., Southern Africa and Puerto Rico on urban social movements and the urban commons. She has studied gender, the global AIDS epidemic and environmental movements. Her book AIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (Wiley-Blackwell 2009), which was awarded the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize for research in women and health by the Society for Medical Anthropology (2012), draws on medical anthropology, science studies, global studies, as well as research on class, gender and race. It discusses the ways in which women mobilized, from small group meetings to major demonstrations, to prevent and treat AIDS in Southern Africa

A dinner and wine reception will precede the talk. Buffet dinner begins at 5:45 PM. ($20 contribution for dinner guests/free for students).

Lectures begin at 6:30 PM and are free and open to the public, but registration is required.