ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Victorian Scientific Racism and the Long History of Science Hesitancy

• In Event: The History of Distrust in Medical Science

English Abstract

This talk explores the way that science is, ironically, a very fungible term. Through the lens of recent political mobilization around the catchphrase "science is real," I examine how science has long mobilized a wide range of institutions, ideologies, interests, and practices. I focus specifically on nineteenth-century narratives of scientific racism in the antisemitic attacks on Benjamin Disraeli as part of a larger political deployment of science. I draw a through line to the recent use of antisemitic rhetoric in the anti vaccination movement to highlight anticosmoplitanism in the long history of scientific hesitancy and skepticism.

Author

• Sharrona Pearl, Texas Christian University