Research: Molecular EugenicsThe American Pursuit of Intelligence Genes, 1916–2022.
This project examines the history of the search for intelligence genes in the American social sciences over the past 100 years. It uses archival research, oral history, computational text analysis, and participant observation to trace the intellectual and institutional continuities and discontinuities from the eugenics of the beginning of the twentieth century, through the differential psychology (intelligence testing) of the first half of the century and the behavior genetics (heritability studies using twins and adoptees) of the second half, to the sociogenomics of the beginning of the twenty-first. The project does not simply aim to uncover the eugenic roots of sociogenomics, but also to show that the tree was never severed from its roots. I contend that differential psychology and behavior genetics provided scientific vehicles for the survival of eugenics across the second half of the twentieth century, delivering eugenics into the present in a new molecular form: sociogenomics. By perpetuating eugenic ideology, sociogenomics has kept alive the intractable nature-nurture debate, cultivating a space for scientific racism and obscuring the role of social institutions in maintaining inequality.
I have received a Hellman Fellowship, a Dean’s Faculty Fellowship, and a Faculty Development Award for this project from UC Davis, and spent the 2021-2022 academic year working on it as a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.
