Colloquium: Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind

Colloquium: Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind

University of Pennsylvania
103 McNeil Building
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6299
Wednesday, 2014-01-29, 12:00-13:00 EST (Local Time)

Osagie K. Obasogie, Professor of Law
University of California, Hastings College of the Law

Professor Obasogie’s research attempts to bridge the conceptual and methodological gaps between empirical and doctrinal scholarship on race. This effort can be seen in his recent work that asks: how do blind people understand race? By engaging in qualitative research with individuals who have been totally blind since birth, this project provides an empirical basis from which to rethink core assumptions embedded in social and legal understandings of race. His first article from this project won the Law & Society Association’s John Hope Franklin Prize in addition to being named runner-up for the Distinguished Article Award by the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association.  This research provides the basis for Professor Obasogie’s first book, Blinded By Sight, which is forthcoming with Stanford University Press.

His scholarship also looks at the past and present roles of science in both constructing racial meanings and explaining racial disparities. This is tied to his interest in bioethics, particularly the social, ethical, and legal implications of reproductive and genetic technologies. Obasogie’s second book, Beyond Bioethics: Towards a New Biopolitics (with Marcy Darnovsky) is currently under contract with the University of California Press…

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