In this Book
University of Minnesota Press
- American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism
- Book
- 2003
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
summary
The Nazis may have given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice—and the “science” that supports it—is still disturbingly alive in America in anti-immigration initiatives, the quest for a “gay gene,” and theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots and persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political and cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal and scientific legitimacy.
American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, and sexuality are crucially linked through a concern with regulating the “unfit.” These links emerge in Ordover’s examination of three separate but ultimately related American eugenics campaigns: early twentieth-century anti-immigration crusades; medical models and interventions imposed on (and sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, and bisexuals; and the compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are put to ideological uses and how “faith in science” can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals and conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse and policies.
American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, and sexuality are crucially linked through a concern with regulating the “unfit.” These links emerge in Ordover’s examination of three separate but ultimately related American eugenics campaigns: early twentieth-century anti-immigration crusades; medical models and interventions imposed on (and sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, and bisexuals; and the compulsory sterilization of poor women and women of color. Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, and nation are put to ideological uses and how “faith in science” can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals and conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse and policies.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. xi-xxviii
- I: National Hygiene: Twentieth-Century Immigration and the Eugenics Lobby
- ImagiNation
- pp. 3-8
- Calculating Hysteria
- pp. 9-31
- The Immigrant Within
- pp. 32-44
- The Abiding Panic
- pp. 54-56
- II: Queer Anatomy: One Hundred Years of Diagnosis, Dissection, and Political Strategy
- Science as Savior
- pp. 59-69
- III: Sterilization and Beyond: The Liberal Appeal of the Technofix
- Liberal Loopholes
- pp. 127-132
- Buck v. Bell and Before
- pp. 133-136
- Margaret Sanger and the Eugenic Compact
- pp. 137-158
- Quinacrine, the Next Wave
- pp. 202-205
- Conclusion
- pp. 206-216
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816691487
Related ISBN(s)
9780816635597
MARC Record
OCLC
228143265
Pages
328
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No