October 12, 2021

Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science has been awarded the 2021 Iris Book Award, which acknowledges outstanding work at the intersection of science religion and technology. The book’s author, Terence Keel, Ph.D., M.T.S., is a UCLA associate professor in the Institute for Society and Genetics, and also in African American Studies.

In an announcement of this year’s Iris Book Award, Keel is quoted, “When I wrote Divine Variations, I wanted to explain why our science continues to frame human differences in terms of race despite the significant lack of evidence to support such thinking. It was clear to me that when you consider the religious and intellectual history of Europe and America the persistence of race was not simply an issue of science but a matter of belief and enduring value commitments. I hoped to write a book that could capture how these beliefs and commitments appeared across the humanities, social sciences, and life sciences.”

In addition to the Iris Book Award, Divine Variations has also received the American Library Association’s 2018 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title.

You can read the UCLA Newsroom article about Keel’s latest Iris Book Award, here.