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*This is an informal lunch-time event. Food will be served.*

Dr. Alondra Nelson, Distinguished Professor at Colombia University, will give our keynote presentation. Her talk, "Racial Reconciliation, Institutional Morality, and the Social Life of DNA" will examine the recent use of genetic ancestry testing by the descendants of nearly three hundred enslaved men and women owned by Georgetown University, whom the institution’s Jesuit stewards sold to Southern plantations in 1838 in order to secure its solvency. The case of the GU 272 will be explored as a “reconciliation project”—a social endeavor in which DNA analysis is put to the use of repairing historic injury.

Co-sponsors: Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Research Institute, African American and African Studies, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Women’s and Gender History Research Cluster, Community and Regional Development