This course looks at how changing technologies, scientific theories, and medical practices have shaped, and been shaped by, our understandings of race. It focuses on the intellectual history of scientific work on heredity, eugenics, genetics, and genomic science. The geographical center of the course is the United States, but case studies and vignettes will explore how scientific, medical, and racial concepts function both internationally and globally. Beginning in the late nineteenth century with early views on human evolution and human "improvement", the course ends with an extended examination of commercial DNA tests and how they have been taken up and used by different groups within the United States.