Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930sThe motto "Eugenics is the self-direction of human evolution" was part of the logo of the Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in 1921. However, by the 1930s, the disturbing legacy of this motto had started to reveal itself in the construction of national identities in countries throughout the world. Popular Eugenics is a fascinating look at how such tendencies emerged within the rhetoric, ideology, and visual aesthetics of U.S. mass culture during the 1930s, offering detailed analysis of the way that eugenics appeared within popular culture and images of modernity, particularly during the Depression era. The essays in this generously illustrated collection demonstrate how, after the scientific foundations of the eugenics movement had been weakened in the 1930s, eugenic beliefs spread into the popular media, including newspapers, movies, museum exhibits, plays, and novels, and even fashion shows and comic strips. Popular Eugenics shows that eugenic thought persisted in science and culture as well as in social policy and goes a long way toward explaining the durability of eugenic thinking and its effects on social policy in the United States. Popular Eugenics will be of interest to scholars and students in a broad range of disciplines, especially American literature and history, popular culture, media studies, and the history of science. |
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Alexis Carrel American Eugenics American Eugenics Society Ann’s argued better biological birth control birthrate body Charles Davenport Chicago civilization College Holiday Congress of Eugenics crime criminal cultural Davenport decade degenerate di€erent Dick Tracy disease Dracula dysgenic e€ect e€orts eȘciency economic Egmont Arens Egmont Arens Papers essay ethnic eugenic education eugenicists eugenics movement eugenics programs evolutionary exhibit Faulkner fig figure final find first fit fitness flow Folder Frankenstein Gebhard genetic genics German Gould H. L. Mencken Harry Laughlin Henry Henry Dreyfuss heredity History Hooton human Hygiene Ibid ideals ideology images immigration influence marriage Mencken mental modern morons mother Nazi Nazi eugenics o€ered OȘce oȘcial Osborn Paul Popenoe physical Pitkin political poor whites Popenoe popular progress race racial reflected reproduction rhetoric Roosevelt scientific sexual significant Snopes social South Southern specifically sterilization Streamlining teeth tion traits unfit University Press visual women World World’s Fair York
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Page 7 - As for the cause of this unanimous torpor and doltishness, this curious and almost pathological estrangement from everything that makes for a civilized culture, I have hinted at it already, and now state it again. The South has simply been drained of all its best blood. The vast hemorrhage of the Civil War half exterminated and wholly paralyzed the old aristocracy, and so left the land to the harsh mercies of the poor white trash, now its masters. The war, of course, was not a complete massacre....
Bibliographic information
| Title | Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s, Christina Cogdell |
| Editors | Susan Currell, Christina Cogdell |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Ohio University Press, 2006 |
| ISBN | 082141691X, 9780821416914 |
| Length | 406 pages |
| Subjects | › Social Science / Popular Culture |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |