Cornell University Anthropologist Receives Book Prize For ‘Genetic Afterlives’

Anthropologist Noah Tamarkin’s book “Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa” (Duke University Press, 2020) has received the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association for Jewish Studies in the category of social science, anthropology, and folklore. His book also received a Diana Forsythe Prize honorable mention.

Book cover: Genetic Afterlives, Click to open gallery view
“Genetic Afterlives” ethnographically examines the politics of race, religion and recognition among Lemba people, Black South Africans who were part of Jewish genetic ancestry studies in the 1980s and 1990s. The book examines how the stakes of genetic data change when approached from the perspective of research subjects rather than genetics researchers.