Inspired by the upcoming 150th anniversary of the 1871 publication of Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, we are organizing an international workshop at Princeton University in February 2018 revisiting the development and legacy of Charles Darwin’s ideas about human evolution. Despite Darwin’s clear and fascinating borrowings from the social realm, Descent has received remarkably little scholarly attention compared to the amount written on Origin. In the conference, we plan to partly rectify this imbalance, bringing together Darwin scholars with historians interested more broadly in the ways scientists in the last century and a half have continuously re-naturalized race, sex, and sexuality within evolutionary theory. The deep connections between social and scientific explanations of human diversity so visible in Descent have contentiously echoed through the past century and a half—in debates over slavery, eugenic theory, the Family of Man, sociobiology, women’s rights, public welfare, and, more recently, neurobiology.

Growing scholarship in this area makes early 2018 a perfect time to gather historians to collectively revisit the implications of evolutionary theory for understanding the diversity of humanity past and present, so that papers can be published in time for the 2021 anniversary. We seek to explore the background for Darwin’s ideas, as these played out in his own works and were incorporated into theories of later natural and social scientists. We ask, most broadly, how historians of science need to reconceive Darwin’s legacy if we follow Descent from its roots to its fruits, wherever these traces lead us.

To register and for more information: https://descentofdarwin.princeton.edu.

Presenters:

Marwa Elshakry (History, Columbia University)

Piers Hale (History of Science, University of Oklahoma)

Kimberly Hamlin (History, Miami University of Ohio)

Lijing Jiang (Beckman Center, Science History Institute, Philadelphia)

Judith Kaplan (Integrated Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania)

Erika Milam (History & History of Science, Princeton University)

Marina Mogilner (History, University of Illinois, Chicago)

Projit Mukharji (History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania)

Myrna Perez Sheldon (Classics & World Religions, Ohio University)

Marianne Sommer (Cultural Studies, Universität Luzern)

Nasser Zakariya (Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley)

Commentators/moderators:

Katja Guenther (History & History of Science, Princeton University)

Emily Kern (History of Science, Princeton University)

Helen Longino (Philosophy, Stanford University)

Suman Seth (Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University)

Jenna Tonn (Science & Technology Studies, Boston College)

This workshop is organized by Erika Milam and Suman Seth. Registration is required.

Co-Sponsored by:

the Program in History of Science, the Center for Collaborative History, the Department of History, the Center for Human Values, and the Program in Gender & Sexuality Studies

Chair:

Erika Milam, Princeton University

Suman Seth, Cornell University