Terence Keel is a Ph.D. candidate with the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University and also holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. His work spans the fields of history of science and medicine, philosophy of science, and religious studies. Terence is interested in how the religious foundations of modern thought have shaped the way natural historians, scientists and lay publics have envisioned race, illness, nature and society since the Enlightenment. In his dissertation Terence reconstructs the history of race within science and medicine, showing how theological notions regarding the antiquity of human existence, the fixity of species traits, and the teleological order of nature facilitated the birth of modern notions of race. Terence's research interests also include the American eugenics and social hygiene movements, contemporary attitudes toward human evolutionary biology, and the ethical and political implications of late-twentieth-century developments in genetics and biotechnology.
last updated: September 12th, 2012