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Introduction Notes Introduction 1. Several critics have challenged the mythologized, three-way rediscovery of Mendel. Bowler, Mendelian Revolution, 113. On the tepid response to Mendel by his contemporaries, see Hartl and Orel, “What Did Gregor Mendel Think He Discovered?” 245–253. 2. Ross, “Turning towards Nirvana,” 737. 3. Lindley Darden tracks the scientific developments during this period in detail in Theory Change in Science: Strategies from Mendelian Genetics. 4. Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, 1 and “American Eugenics Society, A Eugenics Catechism.” 5. Although this biological determinism dominated eugenic public discourse, it was often colored by different degrees of Lamarckian and environmental views. For a discussion of some of the variations between these views, see Hasian, Rhetoric of Eugenics, especially Chapter 1. 6. The literature on these developments is vast. On immigration patterns, see Higham, Strangers in the Land; Divine, American Immigration Policy; and Kraut, Silent Travelers. On World War I, see Eksteins, Rites of Spring, and on the intersection of eugenics and the war, see Finnegan, Against the Specter of a Dragon. For the women’s rights movement, see Cott, Modern Feminism; on reproductive rights and sexual freedom, see Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right; Sanger, Motherhood in Bondage; and Melendy, Sex-Life, Love, Marriage, Maternity. Carole Marks chronicles the geographic shifts of African Americans in Farewell—We’re Good and Gone, while Earnest S. Cox provides a standard contemporary racist perspective in Mongrelizing the Nation. For broader histories of race in America that encompass this period, see Gossett, Race and Chase, The Legacy of Malthus. 7. Charles Davenport, cited in Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 47. 8. Wiggam, Fruit of the Family Tree, 14. 9. Hasian, Rhetoric of Eugenics, 30. 10. See Selden, “Biological Determinism,” 105–122. See also Selden, “The Use of Biology to Legitimate Inequality” and “Educational Policy and Biological Science.” Selden estimates that eugenics was endorsed in over 90 percent of high school biology textbooks well into the 1940s. 208 Notes to Pages 4–5 11. Selden, “Biological Determinism,” 105–122. 12. Cravens, Triumph of Evolution, 53. 13. Hamilton, “Eugenics,” 35–36. Colleges and universities offering courses in eugenics included Antioch, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Indiana State, Louisiana State, MIT, Missouri Wesleyan, Northwestern, Oberlin, Ohio State, Penn State, Princeton, Radcliffe, Rutgers, Smith, Swarthmore, Tulane, the Universities of California, Chicago, Denver, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, Vassar College, Wellesley, and Yale. Eugenical News 1 (1916): 18. 14. For an account of the wide cinematic circulation of the eugenic message, see Pernick, Black Stork, 129–141. 15. See León, “A Literary History,” especially Chapter 1. 16. Holmes, “A Bibliography of Eugenics,” 1–514. 17. Cross-references to the “eugenics” entry included “heredity,” “degeneration,” “race decadence,” “hereditary defectives,” and “race suicide.” Reilly, Surgical Solution, 18. 18. See Childs, Modernism and Eugenics and Doyle, Bordering on the Body. On Eliot and Stein, see English, Unnatural Selections, Chapters 2 and 3; on Gilman, see Weinbaum, Wayward Reproductions, Chapter 2 and Seitler, “Unnatural Selection.” On Lewis, London, and Eliot, see León, “A Literary History.” 19. English, Unnatural Selections, Chapter 1 and Weinbaum, Wayward Reprodu- ctions, Chapter 5. 20. Williams, “Building the New Race”; von Hallberg, “Literature and History”; and Kadlec, “Marianne Moore.” 21. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 88. 22. Stepan, “Hour of Eugenics,” 6. 23. Several studies exist on leading Anglo-American eugenicists, including Francis Galton, Charles Davenport, and Henry Laughlin. Of the increas- ingly rich body of work that expands this picture, Marouf Arif Hasian’s Rhetoric of Eugenics encompasses reactions to eugenics from Catholics, African Americans, and feminists, among other groups. Daylanne English, who identifies eugenics as the “paradigmatic modern American discourse,” looks at the eugenics in the literary work and politics of black and white intel- lectuals, Unnatural Selections, 2. Daniel J. Kevles’s comprehensive history of Anglo-American eugenics, In the Name of Eugenics, acknowledges popular responses to the theory. Scholars who analyze American eugenics outside of cities in the Northeast include Kline, Building a Better Race; Rosen, Preaching Eugenics; Gallagher, Breeding Better Vermonters; Stern, Eugenic Nation; Dorr, Segregation’s Science; Dorr, “Arm in Arm”; and Mitchell, Righteous Propagation. Adams, The WellBorn Science; Kühl, Nazi Connection; and Stepan, “Hour of Eugenics” widen the usual focus on Anglo-American eugenics. Notes to Pages 6–16 209 24. Dewey, Democracy and Education, 214. 25. Wilde, Critic as Artist, 71. 26. Auster, Actresses and Suffragists, 4. 27. Wainscott, Modern American Theater, 2–4. 28. Rydell, World of Fairs, 38–58. 29. Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. 30. See, for example, Glass, “Geneticists Embattled,” 130–154. 31. The debates over the ethics of genetic screening and engineering appear only to be heating up. Four recent books argue for and against the current devel- opments: Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice, Ronald M. Green (Yale University Press, 2007); The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Michael Sandel (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2007); Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, John Harris (Princeton University Press, 2007); and Heredity and Hope: The Case for Genetic Screening, Ruth Schwartz Cowan (Harvard University Press, 2008). Many more autobiographical accounts of new genetic dilemmas exist as well, such as Blood Matters: From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene, Masha Gessen (Harcourt, 2008). See Hasian, Rhetoric of Eugenics, for an analysis of revision- ist constructions of eugenics, especially in Chapters 1 and 7. 32. Scholars who argue for the continued presence of eugenics, often in recon- figured or “positive” forms, include Stern, Eugenic Nation, and Kline, Building a Better Race. (Stern points out that the American Eugenics Society did not change its name until 1973.) Scholars who suggest that eugenics ended in 1930 (or with the advent of World War II) include Haller, Eugenics. 33. Burbank, Training of the Human Plant, 83. 34. James, Principles of Psychology, 363. 35. Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 245. 36. Ibid. 37. Wiggam, Fruit of the Family Tree, 10. 38. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils, 352. 39. Darrow, “The Eugenics Cult,” 129. 1 Predecessors: Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Brieux, and Heredity 1. Weintraub, “Eugene O’Neill: The Shavian Dimension,” 45. 2. Cited in Cargill and Fagin, O’Neill and His Plays, 111. 3. Zola, Dr. Pascal, 38, 113. 4. Ibid., 132. 5. Ibid, 127. 210 Notes to Pages 16–21 6. The fact that Mendel did not address both transmission and development probably contributed to his work’s passing unremarked in 1865. Darden, Theory Change in Science, 43. 7. Darden, Theory Change in Science, 115 and Darwin, Variation of Animals and Plants, 375. Although he offers specific interpretations of the workings of heredity, at the same time Darwin states frankly, “Laws governing inheritance are for the most part unknown. No one can say why the same peculiarity in different individuals of the same species, or in different species, is sometimes inherited and sometimes not so; why the child often reverts in certain charac- ters to its grandfather or grandmother or more remote ancestor; why a pecu- liarity is often transmitted from one sex to both sexes or to one sex alone.” Origin of Species, 11. 8. Strindberg, Selected Essays, 50. 9. Zola, “Naturalism on the Stage,” 711. 10. Ibid., 711, 715. 11. Dr. Pascal, 113. 12. Strindberg, The Father, in August Strindberg, Plays: One, trans. Michael Meyer (London: Methuen, 1976), 27–77. All subsequent references are to this edi- tion and will be cited in the text with act and page numbers. 13. Burkhardt, “Closing the Door on Lord Morton’s Mare,” 4. 14. Selected Essays by August Strindberg, 11. Marvin Carlson shows as well the importance of Goethe’s novel, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), with its use of scientific metaphor, for Ibsen, and for Strindberg particularly. “Ibsen, Strindberg, and Telegony,” 775. 15. See Ribot, 207 and Darwin, Origin of Species, 160–165. 16. Darden, Theory Change in Science, 141. 17. Zola, Dr. Pascal, 36. 18. Darden, Theory Change in Science, 98. 19. Marvin Carlson expands on this point and provides a brief overview of the scientific and literary history of psychic theories of prenatal influence, usu- ally the assumption that the mother’s thinking or perceiving will influence the embryo. Instances of myths of prenatal influence range from Galen’s cautioning pregnant women to avoid powerful impressions that might leave marks on the unborn child to Jacob’s trick in Genesis of producing speck- led or spotted cattle by placing multicolored branches within the animals’ sight as they conceived (Book 30.37–42). “Ibsen, Strindberg, and Telegony,” 774–775. 20. Ibsen, The Lady from the Sea, in Four Major Plays, vol. 2, trans. Rolf Fjelde (New York: Signet Classics, 1970), 227–322. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text with act and page numbers. 21. See, for example, Carlson, “Telegony,” 779 and Goldman, Ibsen, 70. 22. Patricia R. Schroeder explores this question in detail by looking at the rela- tionship of the past to the present in the plays of Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams in Presence of the Past. Notes to Pages 21–25 211 23. Miller, “Ibsen and the Drama of Today,” 227–232. 24. Ibid., 229. 25. Ghosts, in The Plays of Ibsen, vol. 3, trans. Michael Meyer (New York: Washington Square Press, 1986), 25–101. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be cited in the text with act and page numbers. 26. Strindberg, Selected Essays, 50–51.
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