The Social Life of DNA: racial reconciliation and institutional morality [Audio]

Speaker(s): Professor Alondra Nelson | Alondra Nelson will discuss her book The Social Life of DNA on how claims about ancestry are marshalled together with genetic analysis in a range of social ventures. The use of genetic ancestry testing in the United States has grown exponentially since its emergence about fifteen years ago. In this same period, U.S. colleges and universities have increasingly uncovered and confronted their ties to the history of racial slavery. Although genetic ancestry tests are principally sought to provide genealogical information, these data have been marshalled into a wider range of social ventures, including the politics of remembrance and reconciliation. In this presentation, Alondra Nelson examines the recent use of genetic ancestry testing by the descendants of nearly three hundred enslaved men and women owned by Georgetown University, whom the institution’s Jesuit stewards sold to Southern plantations in 1838 in order to secure its solvency. The case of