Noah Tamarkin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University as well as a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His research examines how DNA transforms power and politics as it unevenly becomes part of everyday life through technologies like ancestry testing and criminal forensics. His book “Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa” ethnographically examines the politics of race, religion, and recognition among the Lemba people, Black South Africans who were part of Jewish genetic ancestry studies in the 1980s and 1990s. The book asks how the stakes of genetic data change when approached from the perspective of research subjects rather than genetics researchers. Professor Tamarkin’s work has also appeared in Cultural Anthropology; American Anthropologist; History and Anthropology; Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; and Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.
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Reimagining Citizenship
A Book Launch Roundtable on Noah Tamarkin’s ‘Genetic Afterlives’
Friday, February 26, 2021, 1pm EST
Event Overview
Cornell’s Reimagining Citizenship speaker series showcases scholars, writers, and artists whose work interrogates the limits and possibilities of legal, social, and cultural belonging.
In the third session of the series, Noah Tamarkin will join a panel of anthropology professors from around the country to discuss his recently published book “Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa.”
In “Genetic Afterlives,” Tamarkin, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell, considers new ways to think about belonging. He writes specifically about the Lemba people of South Africa and illustrates how they have given their own meanings to the results of DNA tests and employed them to manage competing claims of Jewish ethnic and religious identity, African indigeneity, and South African citizenship. This nuanced approach to belonging acknowledges the importance of historical and sacred ties to land without valorizing autochthony, borders, or other technologies of exclusion.
Joining Professor Tamarkin in the panel discussion will be leading anthropology experts from Boston University, Durham University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Duke University, NYU, and the University of Minnesota.
Sponsored by Jewish Studies Program, Departments of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, Africana Studies & Research Center, and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
In the third session of the series, Noah Tamarkin will join a panel of anthropology professors from around the country to discuss his recently published book “Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa.”
In “Genetic Afterlives,” Tamarkin, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell, considers new ways to think about belonging. He writes specifically about the Lemba people of South Africa and illustrates how they have given their own meanings to the results of DNA tests and employed them to manage competing claims of Jewish ethnic and religious identity, African indigeneity, and South African citizenship. This nuanced approach to belonging acknowledges the importance of historical and sacred ties to land without valorizing autochthony, borders, or other technologies of exclusion.
Joining Professor Tamarkin in the panel discussion will be leading anthropology experts from Boston University, Durham University, the University of New Hampshire, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Duke University, NYU, and the University of Minnesota.
Sponsored by Jewish Studies Program, Departments of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, Africana Studies & Research Center, and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
What You'll Learn
- How research subjects in genetic ancestry studies produce scientific knowledge
- Why “indigenous” is a complicated category in Africa
- What gets lost when migration is understood in terms of origins
- How racial and religious ideas of Jewishness are expanded by the Lemba people of South Africa
Speaker
Noah Tamarkin
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology
Cornell University
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology, Cornell University
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