My name is Tim Hastings, and I am currently a graduate student in the Master of Arts in History and Archives program at Keene State College. As an undergraduate I received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Keene State, graduating in 2013. This was followed by four years working at Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston where I was part of a research group that investigated the genetics of diabetes and the effect genetics play on disease outcome.

I am interested in intellectual history and the history of science. For this class, my research will focus on the effect that the Civil War had on the growth of the concept of biological determinism. It will examine the racist nineteenth-century scientific ideas that formed the foundation of biological determinism and how these ideas were ultimately used after the war to justify the social hierarchy in which African individuals remained in a position of inherent inferiority.