Core Department Faculty Member
- Catherine Bliss
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. New School for Social Research
- Email: catherine.bliss@rutgers.edu
- Office: Davison Hall
- Curriculum Vitae
Catherine “Rina” Bliss is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Her research explores the personal and societal significance of emerging genetic sciences.
Rina's award-winning book Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice (Stanford University Press 2012) reveals how genomics became today’s new science of race. Her second book Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics (Stanford University Press 2018) traces convergences in social and genetic science, and their implications for healthcare, education, criminal justice, and policymaking.
Rina is currently writing two books for a general audience. Let's Stop Calling Race a Social Construct (W.W. Norton) explains why the phrase "race is a social construct" is at once apt and inadequate to the ongoing confusion around race. Rethinking Intelligence (Harper Wave) shares insights from the burgeoning science of epigenetics to help us harness our environments to empower our minds.
- In the Public Eye:
- Featured in STAT: "Buffalo shooting ignites a debate over the role of genetics researchers in white supremacist ideology"
- Featured in Texas Monthly: "Are Some People Born Lucky?"
- Faculty Article(s):
- Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science
- Conceptualizing Race in the Genomic Age
- Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice
- Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics
- Program Areas:
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
- Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration
