My research considers the preoccupation and continuum of blackness as a marker of difference in disease processes. I question the epistemic authority of race to inform and make possible certain knowledge claims about black bodies. In doing so I seek to disclose the malleability of white supremacy in establishing particular disease concepts to serve ideological purposes in the normalization of medical racism and in the presumption that bodies are shaped by race. I am drawn to the reification of blackness in medical discourse and scientific research, particularly in America during the 19th and 20th century, as these practices and ideologies establish paradigms for understanding how race gets written onto bodies and into diseases.

 rrobva1@lsu.edu

Twitter @raquelmrobvais