Person

Andrew S. Curran

Bylines

Inventing the Science of Race

In 1741, Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest searching for the origin of “blackness.” The results help us see how Enlightenment thinkers justified slavery.

by Andrew S. Curran, Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021

Who’s Black and Why?: A Hidden Chapter from the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Andrew S. Curran

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Painting by Henri Testelin of Colbert Presenting the Members of the Royal Academy of Sciences to Louis XIV in 1667 (17th century).

The Dawn of Scientific Racism

In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.

by Christy Pichichero via Public Books on October 25, 2022

Aerial view illustration of a slave ship

‘Who’s Black and Why?’

A new book by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Andrew S. Curran examines how 18th-century academics understood Black identity.

by John Samuel Harpham via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 31, 2022

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