Michael G. Kenny

Dr. Michael Kenny, "Professor of Anthropology, was educated at the University of Virginia and Oxford University. He has done field research on pre-colonial East African history as expressed in oral tradition. In more recent times he has been concerned with the cultural history of medical psychology and alternative medicine, religion and political ideology, and the cultural shaping of personal experience.

"Dr. Kenny continues to work on subjects pertaining to the relation between culture, history and self-experience. He has closely followed psychiatric and anthropological debates concerning spirit possession, multiple personality, amnesia, and the politics of memory. Dr. Kenny is now engaged in research on the relationship between the eugenics movement and the idea of race. This has led to a number of publications, and his current work is focused on the role of genomics in constructing human differences and fabricating new social identities.

"Michael G. Kenny was a participant on May 16th, 2008, in a symposium sponsored by Genome British Columbia and Simon Fraser University on the topic of "Confronting ‘Race’: DNA and Diversity in the Digital Age". Professor Kenny's presentation addressed 'Haplotype Diversity, the Microarray, and the Refiguration of Race'."

Papers

• ‘A Question of Blood, Race, and Politics,’ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 61(4): 456-491; 2006
• ‘A place for memory: The interface between personal and collective history,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41(3): 420-437; 1999
• ‘Toward a racial abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the origins of the Pioneer Fund,’ Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 38(3), 259-283; 2002
• ‘Racial science in social context: John R. Baker on eugenics, race, and the public role of the scientist,’ Isis, 95: 394-419; 2004
• 'A darker shade of green: Medical botany, homeopathy, and cultural politics in interwar Germany,' Social History of Medicine, 15(3), 481-504; 2004