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American Eugenics:
Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism Nancy Ordover
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The Nazis may have
given eugenics its negative connotations, but the practice - and the
"science" that supports it - is still distributingly
alive in 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. Nancy Ordover is an independent scholar who lives in New
York City. |
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