Columbia University
february, 2022
28feb6:00 pm- 7:30 pmWhy DNA Doesn't Tell Us Who We Are - Nara Milanich
Event Details
Why DNA Doesn't Tell Us Who We Are - Nara Milanich
Event Details
THERE WILL BE A RECEPTION AT 5:00 P.M.
* All visitors are required to wear double masks in indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status. This means wearing two surgical masks, a surgical mask with a cloth mask over it, or one KN95, N95, KF94 mask, which does not need an additional layer.
ABOUT THE LECTURE
For millennia, the principle pater semper incertus est (“the father is always uncertain”) seemed an immutable law of nature. But in the 1920s new scientific advances promised to solve the mystery of paternity. The stakes of these new technologies were incalculable, for paternity has always been a public relationship as well as a private one, conferring child support, patrimony, a name, nationality, and identity. Yet even as science promised to discover the father, it revealed the social, cultural, and political nature of paternity and inadvertently challenged the very idea of paternal truth. Who’s your daddy? In the age of DNA, the answer is as uncertain as ever.
BIOGRAPHY
Nara Milanich is Professor of Latin American History at Barnard College, where she teaches the history of kinship, childhood, reproduction, and gender. Her most recent book, Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (Harvard, 2019), was a finalist for the PROSE Award of the Association of American Publishers and received coverage in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Salon, Scientific American, NPR, CBC, and Time, among other places. She is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library.
Time
(Monday) 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
University of New England Portland Campus, Innovation Hall, 716 Stevens Avenue, Portland, Maine 04103