Capturing Kahanamoku: A Conversation with Michael Rossi скачать в хорошем качестве

Capturing Kahanamoku: A Conversation with Michael Rossi

How did surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku become the focus of a eugenicist’s fixation in 1920s America? In this compelling conversation on Capturing Kahanamoku: How a Surfing Legend and a Scientific Obsession Redefined Race and Culture, historian Michael Rossi examines how one of the world’s most celebrated athletes was drawn into a pseudoscientific project that sought to categorize race through flawed and dangerous theories. Drawing on extensive archival research and firsthand interviews, Rossi offers a powerful meditation on the subjectivity of science, the enduring harms of eugenics, and the story of a man whose identity defied rigid classification. Key Questions This Video Explores: • What inspired Michael Rossi to begin this project, and how did it evolve into Capturing Kahanamoku? • How does the book situate Duke Kahanamoku within the cultural history of surfing and global sport? • How did the eugenics movement influence scientific inquiry and public perception during this period? • What larger themes, about race, identity, power, and the limits of science—emerge from this story? About the Professor: Michael Rossi is Associate Professor of the History of Medicine, the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and the College at the University of Chicago. A historian of medicine and science in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, his work focuses on the historical and cultural metaphysics of the body: how different people at different times understood questions of beauty, truth, falsehood, pain, pleasure, goodness, and reality vis-à-vis their corporeal selves and those of others. His first book manuscript traces the origins of color science—the physiology, psychology, and physics of color—in the late-nineteenth-century United States to a series of questions about what modern America ought to be: about the scope of medical, scientific, and political authority over the sensing body; about the nature of aesthetic, physiological, and cultural development between individual and civilization; about the relationship between aesthetic harmony, physiological balance, and social order. His second project looks at how linguists, anatomists, and speech pathologists moved, over the course of the twentieth century, from viewing language as a function of sound-producing organs (tongue, lips, palate, larynx, etc.) to searching for a notional “language organ” within the brains of all human beings. Such interpretative shifts in understanding human anatomy are neither an ancient phenomenon nor one limited to extreme medical specialization, but rather are ongoing issues, providing a window on the social, political, and philosophical understanding of modern bodies, medicine, and science. Prior to Chicago, Michael was a postdoctoral fellow in the Groupe Histoire des sciences de l’homme at the Ecole Normale Superieur de Cachan in France. He received a PhD in the history and anthropology of science, technology, and society from MIT and an AB from Columbia University. Chapters 00:00 — Introduction 01:47 — The Origins of the Project 04:08 — Why Capturing Kahanamoku? 06:21 — Framing the Story 09:15 — The Cultural Rise of Surfing 11:22 — Who Was Duke Kahanamoku? 14:40 — Henry’s Role and Perspective 19:13 — The Historical Context of Eugenics 21:33 — Where the Science—and the Narrative—Went Wrong 25:12 — Central Themes and Takeaways 27:39 — Audience Q&A 45:06 — Closing Reflections This discussion, Capturing Kahanamoku: A Conversation with Michael Rossihere, is hosted by The Graham School. Learn more about Graham School events here: https://graham.uchicago.edu/events/. Learn more about all University of Chicago Graham School offerings and events here: https://graham.uchicago.edu/