Synopses & Reviews
"
Eugenic Nation is a masterful work that offers a bold and provocative argument about the impact of eugenics on California and the nation as a whole. Stern's analyses of US-Mexico immigration policy and 'eugenic landscapes' are particularly innovative and will surely change how subsequent scholars approach these topics."and#151;Molly Ladd-Taylor, author of
Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890-1930"At long last a book about eugenics in California, which sterilized more people than any other state. Eugenic Nation reveals what fueled the movement, including Hispanic immigration, fear of disease, and environmental preservation. In all, an important and thought-provoking book."and#151;Daniel J. Kevles, author of In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity
"Stern brilliantly exposes the dark role that the Golden State played as a leader in the closely-linked eugenics and early conservation movements. By demonstrating how theory became practice in California's institutions and laws, and how those ideas persist today, she reveals the survival of demons we thought we had vanquished."and#151;Gray A. Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
"Eugenic Nation examines the science of 'better breeding' in the American West, revealing the intimate relations of race science, gender, sexuality, and population policy in the twentieth century. With this important book, Stern transforms our understanding of eugenics in the US."and#151;Warwick Anderson, author of The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health, and Racial Destiny in Australia
Review
"Hegartyand#8217;s work may inspire more careful considerations of the ways scientists think about sexuality and intelligence."
Review
and#8220;Peter Hegarty has crafted a fascinating history of the intersectionality of sexuality and intelligence in the social sciences. Hegarty masterfully weaves together queer theory, history, and psychology to examine how what many in the social science community have defined as normal is constructed and mutually constitutive.
Gentlemenand#8217;s Disagreement sheds new light on Alfred Kinsey and Lewis Terman, but just as important, it offers insight into how these human science discourses ofand#160; sexuality and intelligence developed and how they continue today to shape modern psychologyand#8217;s understandings of (and assertions about) normality. and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Peter Hegartyand#8217;s highly original study of the relationship between sexuality and intelligence in the twentieth-century American human sciences focuses on their most celebrated students, Alfred Kinsey and Lewis Terman. By analyzing their personal biographies, training, disciplinary outlooks, and use of the conventions of contemporary science, Hegarty is able to construct a fascinating cautionary tale about unacknowledged subjectivity, misleading methodologies, and the politics of intelligence testing and human sexuality that will inform both practitioners and historians of the human sciences.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Peter Hegarty is the first scholar to examine seriously and systematically the connections between the discourses of intelligence and of sexuality, both of which were being refashioned in important ways in the United States. Hegartyand#8217;s use of Lewis Terman and Alfred Kinsey to build his analysis is original and compelling.and#8221;
Review
"[An] intriguing and provocative study."
Synopsis
Many people assume that eugenics all but disappeared with the fall of Nazism, but as this sweeping history demonstrates, the idea of better breeding had a wide and surprising reach in the United States throughout the twentieth century. With an original emphasis on the American West,
Eugenic Nation brings to light many little-known factsand#151;for example, that one-third of the involuntary sterilizations in this country occurred in California between 1909 and 1979and#151;as it explores the influence of eugenics on phenomena as varied as race-based intelligence tests, school segregation, tropical medicine, the Border Patrol, and the environmental movement.
Eugenic Nation begins in the 1900s, when influential California eugenicists molded an extensive agenda of better breeding for the rest of the country. The book traces hereditarian theories of sex and gender to the culture of conformity of the 1950s and moves to the 1960s, arguing that the liberation movements of that decade emerged in part as a challenge to policies and practices informed by eugenics.
Synopsis
What is the relationship between intelligence and sex? In recent decades, studies of the controversial histories of both intelligence testing and of human sexuality in the United States have been increasingly commonandmdash;and hotly debated. But rarely have the intersections of these histories been examined. In
Gentlemenandrsquo;s Disagreement, Peter Hegarty enters this historical debate by recalling the debate between Lewis Termanandmdash;the intellect who championed the testing of intelligenceandmdash; and pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, and shows how intelligence and sexuality have interacted in American psychology.
Through a fluent discussion of intellectually gifted onanists, unhappily married men, queer geniuses, lonely frontiersmen, religious ascetics, and the two scholars themselves, Hegarty traces the origins of Termanandrsquo;s complaints about Kinseyandrsquo;s work to show how the intelligence testing movement was much more concerned with sexuality than we might remember. And, drawing on Foucault, Hegarty reconciles these legendary figures by showing how intelligence and sexuality in early American psychology and sexology were intertwined then and remain so to this day.
About the Author
Alexandra Minna Stern is Associate Director, Center for the History of Medicine, and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and American Culture at the University of Michigan. She is coeditor, with Howard Markel, of Formative Years: Children's Health in the United States, 1880-2000 (2002).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1and#160;and#160; A Gentlemenand#8217;s Disagreement?
2and#160;and#160; Why the Gifted Boy Didnand#8217;t Masturbate
3and#160;and#160; Less Than Ideal Husbands
4and#160;and#160; Queer Individuals: Their Nature and Nurture
5and#160;and#160; Gentlemen and Horse Traders
6and#160;and#160; Ancient Ascetics and Modern Non-Americans
7and#160;and#160; Frontier Living, by Figures Alone
8and#160;and#160; Normalization Now
Notes
Works Cited
Index of Names
General Index