Brain and Race

Claudio Pogliano is Professor of History of science at the University of Pisa. He has published numerous monographs and articles, especially in his main area of interest: the modern and contemporary history of biomedical and anthropological sciences, with a particular regard to their visual aspects.

"What Brain and Race offers that is new is tracking the evolution of ideas and approaches to examining the brain and race that were exchanged between different scientists and scientific texts, and the nuances and intricacies of this intellectual exchange."– Kathryn Woods, Goldsmiths, University of London, in: Journal of British Studies, July 2021, Vol. 60, No. 3: pp. 755-57. "Pogliano’s book constitutes the most extensive, important and profound effort in the historical analysis of the brain-race relationship, a contribution that will be impossible to ignore in considering the history of anthropology, neuroscience and, above all, the ideas that lie at the biological roots of racism." – Paolo Mazzarello, University of Pavia, in: Nuncius. Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science, 37 (2022)

• ContentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction1 Eighteenth-century Onset1 Darker Skin and Brain2 Qualitative and Quantitative Differences3 Speculations and Objections2 Rising Tide1 The “Phrenological Wedge”2 Shrunken Brains3 Materialism and the Recapitulation Theory4 Weighing Empty, Filled Spaces5 The Will to Differentiate6 Early Doubts3 Climax1 Uncertain Certainty: Paris on Stage2 An Intense Decade3 An Urgent Desideratum for Science4 Antinomies and Paradoxes5 Orphans of Broca6 “A Literature By Itself”4 Twentieth-century Epilogue1 Resilience Despite Everything2 Further Views in Conflict3 Innovating Techniques, Popular Science, and Deconstructing MythsSummaryBibliographyIndex of Names