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Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East

Jews and Genetics: History and Identity

Course Code:
155901278
Status:
Course Not Running 2012/2013
Unit value:
0.5
Taught in:
Term 1
The modern field of genetics tells us we are all the same and that races simply do not exist as a biological construct. However there are small differences between groups which can be used for historical and other purposes and these enable population geneticists for instance to research the origin, migration patterns and even plausibly religious origins of groups. A number of these studies have cast light upon various aspects of Jewish history.
This course studies ways in which the identity of and others' attitudes towards select Jewish and Judaising groups may be impacted by the modern study of genetics as it relays information about origins and migration patterns through the media back to the subject groups and to the wider society. How does this genetic research impact upon the way Jewish diasporas see themselves and the way others see them? What will it contribute to their diaspora experience? How will this biological information feed into constructions of the other in a diaspora context? The subject groups are drawn from a number of different loci in the Jewish diaspora including the Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, the Falashas, Bene Israel etc.
One debate which is raging at the moment suggests a genetic link between "Jewish" diseases and intelligence; others have stressed the homogeneity of Jewish groups while also suggesting the Jewishness of other groups (Lemba, Benei Israel) who have not normally been considered ethnically part of the Jewish world. Further aspects of diaspora experience in which genetic studies on Jews are important include a range of racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and white and black supremacist discourses.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites

Objectives and learning outcomes of the course

The objectives and learning outcome are:

  1. a sense of how genetics can be useful for historical purposes, 
  2. how such studies have changed perceptions of Jewish history, and
  3. a knowledge of how such studies impact upon identity issues.

Workload

Two hours per week over eleven weeks.

Method of assessment

One two-hour written paper in May/June (80%); one 2500-word essay to be submitted on the first day of Term 3 (20%).

Suggested reading

Background Reading:
  • Kaplan, Steven, The Beta Israel (Falasha) in Ethiopia, From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century, New York and London: New York University Press, 1992.
  • Zhou, Xun, Chinese Perceptions of the ‘Jews and Judaism, A History of the Youtai, Richmond: Curzon, 2001
  • Stillman, Norman, The Jews of Arab Lands, A History and Source Book, Philadelphia: the Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979
  • Parfitt T. The Lost Tribes of Israel: the History of a Myth, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2002.
  • Cavalli-Sforza Luigi Luca and Francesco Cavalli -Sforza The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution, 1996

 

  • Bradman N. , M.Thomas ‘Why the Y? The Y chromosome in the study of human evolution, migration and prehistory’ in Science Spectra 1998; 14: pp.32-37
  • Brown K., ‘Tangled roots? Genetics meets genealogy’ in Science , 2002; 295 pp. 1634-1635
  • Carsten S. Cultures of Relatedness, Cambridge University Press, 2000
  • D’Onofrio S. ‘L’atome de parenté spirituelle’ in L’Homme (Paris) 118, pp.79-110
  • Davis D.S., ‘Genetic research and Communal Narratives’ in Jurimetrics, The Journal of Law, Science, and Technology 42/2, (Winter 2002), pp.199-207
  • Duster T. ‘The Prism of Heritability and the Sociology of Knowledge’ in L. Nader, ed. Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge. NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 119-30
  • Elliott C. ‘Adventures in the gene pool’ in Wilson Quarterly, winter 2003,pp.12-21
  • Frankin S. ‘Bioligisation revisited: kinship theory in the context of the new biologies’ in S.Franklin and S. McKinnon (eds) Relative Values: Refiguring Kinship Studies Duke University Press, 2001
  • Franklin S. ‘Life itself: Global nature and the genetic imaginary’ in S.Franklin, C.Lury, J.Stacy, Global Nature, Global Culture, London, Sage, 2000
  • Franklin S. ‘Science as Culture Cultures of Science’ Annual Review of Anthropology 1995 24:163-84
  • Gilman S. The Jew’s Body, New York and London: Routledge, 1991
  • Holy L. Anthropological Perspectives on Kinship, Pluto, 1996
  • Parfitt T. Genetics, Mass Media, and Identity: A Case Study of the Genetic Research on the Lemba and the Bene Israel,London, Routledge, 2006
  • Parfitt T Journey to the Vanished City: The Search for a Lost Tribe of Israel, New York: Random House, 2000
  • Parfitt T Genetics, History, And Identity: The Case Of The Bene Israel and the Lemba ‘ Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (issue no.29) pp. 193-224 (Dept of Social Medicine, Harvard 2005)
  • Parfitt T ‘The development of Fictive Israelite Identities in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific (17th-21stC) in Généalogies revées special issue of Diasporas histoire et sociétés no.5. 2005 pp 49-56.
  • Parfitt T Descended from Jewish Seed: Genetics and Jewish history in India: the Bene Israel and the Black Jews of Cochin’ in Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies vi 2003 pp.7-18
  • Parfitt T ‘ Place, Priestly Status and Purity: the Impact of genetic research on an Indian Jewish Community’ in Developing World Bioethics volume 3 no.2 2003.
  • Parfitt T ‘Constructing Black Jews: Genetic Tests and the Lemba – the ‘Black Jews of South Africa’ in Developing World Bioethics volume 3 no.2 2003
  • Parfitt T Genes Religion and History: The Creation of a Discourse of Origin among a Judaising African Tribe, Jurimetrics 42/2, 2002
  • Parfitt T Une étrange quete des origines: l’affaire des Lembas du Zimbabwe et du sud de l’Afrique et du chromosome Y des Cohanim, Le fait de l’analyse 10 Spring 2001
  • Parfitt T (With Thomas etc.) ‘Y Chromosomes Travelling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the Origins of the Lemba in American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (2000)
  • Parfitt T (with Thomas, Bradman, Ben-Ami, Goldstein), ‘Origins of Old Testament Priests Nature 394 (July 1998) 138-40
  • Price E.T.‘The Melungeons: a mixed blood strain in the southern Appalachians’ in Geographical Review 1951; 41: pp.256-271
  • Rabinow P. ‘ Galton's Regret: Of Types and Individuals’ in Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton University Press, 1996
  • Shohat E. R. Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, Multiculturalism and the Media, London and New York, 1997, p.184
  • Simpson B,’ Imagined genetic communities: Ethnicity and essentialism in the twenty-first century’in Anthropology Today 2000 16:3
  • Stone L. (ed.) New Directions in Anthropological Kinship, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001
  • Tutton, R. ‘Culture, society and the new human genetics’, in McGowan, K. (ed), Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, (Blackwell, Oxford 2002)
  • Van Dijk T.A., Elite Discourse and Racism, Newbury Park, London, New Delhi, 1993, p.242