Genetics and Nation-Building in the Middle East | Elise Burton

E324 | Genetics have emerged as a new scientific tool for studying human ancestry and historical migration. And as research into the history of genetics demonstrates, genetics and other bioscientific approaches to studying ancestry were also integral to the transformation of the very national and racial categories through which ancestry has come to be described over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this podcast, we speak to Elise Burton about her research on the development of human genetics in the Middle East. Burton has studied the history of genetics within a comparative framework, examining the interrelated cases of human genetics research in Turkey, Israel, Iran, and elsewhere. In this episode, we focus in particular on the history of genetics in Turkey and its relationship to changing understandings of nation and race within the early Republic. In a bonus segment (see below), we also look under the hood of commercial genetic ancestry tests to understand present-day science within the context of these historical developments. More at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/genetics.html Elise Burton just earned her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in May 2017 and her BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley in May 2010. Come October, she will begin a Junior Research Fellowship at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University's Department of History and is currently an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s. Shireen Hamza is a doctoral student in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses broadly on the history of science and medicine in the Islamicate Middle Ages, and more specifically on the history of women's health. Maryam Patton is a PhD student at Harvard University in the History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She studies the history of ideas and books in the Early Modern Mediterranean. CREDITS Episode No. 324 Release Date: 16 July 2017 Recording Location: Cambridge, MA Audio editing by Chris Gratien Music: from Excavated Shellac - Lili Labassi - Mazal Haye Mazal; from archive.org - Harmandali - Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi; Baglamamin Dugumu - Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Katibim (Uskudar'a Gider iken) - Safiye Ayla Special thanks to Kara Günes for permission to use the composition "Istanbul" Images and bibliography courtesy of Elise Burton available at http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2017/07/genetics.html