(Ebook) American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism by Nancy Ordover ISBN 9780816635597, 0816635595

(Ebook) American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism by Nancy Ordover ISBN 9780816635597, 0816635595

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," & theories of collective intelligence. Tracing the historical roots & persistence of eugenics in the United States, Nancy Ordover explores the political & cultural climate that has endowed these campaigns with mass appeal & scientific legitimacy. 

American Eugenics demonstrates how biological theories of race, gender, & 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 & interventions imposed on (& sometimes embraced by) lesbians, gays, transgendered people, & bisexuals; & the compulsory sterilization of poor women & women of color. 

Throughout, her work reveals how constructed notions of race, gender, sexuality, & nation are put to ideological uses & how “faith in science” can undermine progressive social movements, drawing liberals & conservatives alike into eugenics-based discourse & policies. Nancy Ordover is an independent scholar who lives in New York City.