Upcoming Events

Wednesday, October 14 4:00-6:00 p.m. in the Big 12 Room at the Kansas Union

Dalton Conley, Princeton University

Your Genes Are in My Environment: Sociogenomics and the End of Nature vs. Nurture

Genomics is coming for the social sciences, and the important part isn't CRISPR gene editing — it's genetic prediction. The polygenic index (PGI), a single number summing thousands of small genetic differences, is now a standard research instrument. It is fixed at conception and shuffled at random from parent to child — the ultimate natural experiment, running inside every family. That gives social scientists leverage on questions they have struggled with for decades: how much peers actually influence each other, how children shape the parenting they receive, how strongly we sort by genotype in marriage and neighborhood. My schoolmate's DNA predicts whether I take up smoking. My daughter's DNA predicts how much I read to her at bedtime. The environment, in other words, is partly made of other people's genes.
Drawing on The Social Genome, I'll cover what these scores can and can't do, and their policy and pragmatic applications — embryo screening, insurance, schools — already being deployed without much public discussion.

Presented by KU Sociology

Wednesday, October 28 12:00-1:30 p.m. on Zoom (https://kansas.zoom.us/j/81456346808, passcode: 121900)

Andrea Gómez Cervantes, Wake Forest University

Illegality in the Heartland: Latinidad, Indigeneity and Immigration Policies During Times of Hate

Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic participant observation, Illegality in the Heartland interrogates existing understandings of illegality and Latinidad by centering the voices and experiences of Indigenous and mestizo Latino immigrants in the American heartland during the first Trump administration, a distinct era of political uncertainty. Immigration policies and political narratives have long tied those suspected of being "illegal" to perceptions of Mexican origin and stereotypes associated with Hispanics more broadly. Likewise, Latin American immigrants in the United States have been positioned as a single group, thereby collapsing ethnoracial distinctions under the umbrella identities of Hispanic, Latina/o, or Latinx/e. Andrea Gómez Cervantes examines these ethnoracial divides among Latino immigrants as they seek to navigate life and make Kansas their home while undocumented. This work shines a crucial light on how immigration laws, racialization, and gender mechanisms intersect in spaces where immigrants are not yet an established part of the public imaginary—even as they make essential contributions to their communities and mobilize as increasingly influential constituents in their own right.

Presented by KU Sociology