STSC 052 Superman! A History of Eugenics in American Culture, 1900-Present
Cross-listed as HSOC 052
Offered:Fall 2008
Cogdell M 2-5
Freshman Seminar
Did you know that "To Breed a Race of Thoroughbreds" was an early motto of Planned Parenthood, an organization formed to promote birth control explicitly for the poor? Did you know that up until 1983, it was still legal to subject people in state mental institutions to involuntary reproductive sterilization, and that over 60,000 individuals in the U.S. have undergone this process? "Eugenics" means to be "well-born," and prior to the existence of genetics as we know it today, the eugenics movement aimed to "improve" the nation's population by limiting the reproduction of the "unfit" and encouraging that of the "fit." Its ideals infiltrated popular culture, literature, comics, and the arts, and formed the rationale for many state and federal laws. Yet, who decides who is "fit" or "unfit"? What are the traits of a Superman or a Wonder Woman? Are eugenic ideals a thing of the past, or does today's genetic engineering offer us the possibility of creating "designer children"? This course examine the history of attempts to direct the course of human evolution toward genetic "improvement," as manifested in American science, politics, and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
