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 Bliss is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. She teaches courses in the sociology of health and illness, and science and technology. She is the author of Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice and Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics.

  Dr. Bliss’s research examines the sociology of today's newest avenues in science and medicine: genomics and postgenomics. Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice reveals how DNA science has emerged to become the newest authority on the meaning of race. It demonstrates the institutionalization of academic-industry-governmental ties as well as the crystallization of a set of deterministic notions of race that perpetuate social inequality even as they aim to prevent it. Social by Nature: The Promise and Peril of Sociogenomics illuminates cutting edge developments in gene-environment science as natural and social scientists partner to create DNA analyses of social behavior. Following a small group of innovators, it exposes the evolution of a new field of genomics. This field evinces novel patterns in interdisciplinarity, such as transdisciplinarity marked by power imbalances in genetic versus social science. These imbalances shape the way the field constructs notions of race, gender, and sexuality.

• In the Public Eye:
  • Interviewed for The Scientist on "What Your DNA Can't Tell You."
  • Participated in LeapsMag's Big Questions debate with the op-ed "DNA Tests for Intelligence Ignore the Real Reason Why Kids Succeed or Fail."
  • Interviewed for and consulted on RadioLab's miniseries "G."
• Faculty Article(s): Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification in Genomic Science
  Conceptualizing Race in the Genomic Age
• 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