Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past. Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration; to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship; to rewrite history and collective memory; to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies; and to open new thinking about health and well-being. At the same time, in many societies genetic evidence is being called upon to perform a kind of racially charged cultural work: to repair the racial past and to transform scholarly and popular opinion about the “nature” of identity in the present.

Genetics and the Unsettled Past considers the alignment of genetic science with commercial genealogy, with legal and forensic developments, and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history.

This unique collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines—biology, history, cultural studies, law, medicine, anthropology, ethnic studies, sociology—to explore the emerging and often contested connections among race, DNA, and history. Written for a general audience, the book’s essays touch upon a variety of topics, including the rise and implications of DNA in genealogy, law, and other fields; the cultural and political uses and misuses of genetic information; the way in which DNA testing is reshaping understandings of group identity for French Canadians, Native Americans, South Africans, and many others within and across cultural and national boundaries; and the sweeping implications of genetics for society today.

KEITH WAILOO is the Townsend Martin Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the author or editor of several books, including Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (Rutgers University Press), How Cancer Crossed the Color Line, and Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health.

ALONDRA NELSON is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. She is the author of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination and coeditor of Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life.

CATHERINE LEE is an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty associate at the Institute for Health at Rutgers University. She is completing a book entitled Fictive Kin: Family Reunification and the Meaning of Race in Immigration Policy.