1 / 27

Living with a Shrouded Legacy The History of the American Eugenics Movement

Overview.

abe
Download Presentation

Living with a Shrouded Legacy The History of the American Eugenics Movement

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Living with a Shrouded Legacy The History of the American Eugenics Movement Greta Bauer, MPH

    2. Overview “First Wave Eugenics” 1880s to ?1950 Social Darwinism as part of US progressive movement to improve society Ideas originated in Britain, most heavily implemented in US and Germany Goal was to increase the “fitness” of a nation by increasing births and immigration amongst the “fit” and decreasing them amongst the “unfit.” Methods included segregation, sterilization, immigration restriction, marriage restriction laws, community education

    3. Extent of Implementation in US National- and state-level laws, court decisions Research centers and institutes in universities Academic eugenics journals Inclusion in academic work across disciplines Foundations and societies, conferences Major funding by Carnegies, Harrimans, Kelloggs NEA promotion, taught in HS and college Common topic of articles in popular press Sex-education books for children and parents “Fit family” and “perfect baby” contests

    4. How common-sensical were eugenic ideas in the first half of the 20th century?

    7. Two of many popular books on marriage, sex-education and child-rearing

    8. Booth outside the Eugenics Building at the Kansas Free Fair

    11. A college course description and textbook. In 1928 there were 376 eugenics courses taught in American universities.

    12. Studies of rural families such as this offered up the idea of “white trash”

    13. Birth Control, eugenic style...

    14. How did eugenics come to be so pervasive in American society?

    16. Eugenic Research

    19. Eugenic Research: Pedigrees

    20. Eugenic Research: Agricultural Studies

    21. Eugenic Research: Racial Comparisons

    22. Professional Meetings: Some Topics

    23. Professional Meetings: Strategies

    24. The Legacy Arguments against poverty-control policies as promoting a weak society Linking of reproduction to state’s interests Biological legitimization of race as a concept and racism as an ideology Framework for organization of ideology into programs, policies and practices Interdisciplinarity

    25. Present and Future Reemergence of eugenic arguments (e.g.The Bell Curve, anti-welfare argumentation) Ethical evaluation of current technologies (e.g. selective abortion of potentially disabled fetuses, court-ordered Norplant) The ethical challenges of emergent genetic technologies and reproduction “2nd wave eugenics”

    27. For further information: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, DNA Learning Center - Image archives http://vector.cshl.org/eugenics.html Daniel Kevles. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. New York, NY: Alfred E. Knopf, 1985. Diane B. Paul. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1998. E-mail bauer@epi.umn.edu for lengthy bibliography

More Related