The connection that critics make between medical genetics and eugenics is historically fallacious. Activists on the political right are as mistaken as activists on the political left: Genetic screening was not eugenics in the past, is not eugenics in the present, and, unless its technological systems become radically transformed, will not be…

This article is based on a talk that was given by the author at the Institute of Historical Research on 3 February 2011, on the Victorian polymath Francis Galton and the malign legacy of his eugenic theories. It pays tribute to the pioneering work of the late Brian Simon in challenging the whole idea of "fixed innate intelligence" and in…

Eugenic Theories are clearly alive and well in present-day society--or this is at least true of those theories relating to the passing on of abilities and talents from one generation to the next. This depressing thought was prompted by a reading of Chris Woodhead's latest book "A Desolation of Learning."

Background/Context: The current biographic understanding of John Dewey's experience adopting and raising an Italian boy named Sabino emphasizes the theme of finding an emotional replacement for Morris and Gordon, two young sons who had tragically died on family trips to Europe. Lacking is substantive attention to the fact that John Dewey's son had…

In the United States, genetic research, as well as policy and practice innovations based on this research, has expanded greatly over the past few decades. This expansion is indicated, for example, by the mapping of the human genome, an expansion of genetic counseling, and other biogenetic research. Also, a disability rights movement that in many…

Historian Brian Greenwald offers a revisionist interpretation of Bell. He reviews Bell's role and influence within the American eugenics movement and shows that Bell had the respect of the most prominent American eugenicists. His intimate knowledge of deafness, from personal experience with his mother and wife and from his studies of deaf people…

Based on post-structural feminist and gender studies, the present article analyses the importance given to the practice of physical education, sports and exercise as part of the national policy to strengthen the Caucasian-Brazilian population at the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasising the priority made of the White female body as the…

This essay sheds light on the "father of epigenetics," Conrad Hal Waddington's (1905-1975) tacit critique of one of the most prominent biologists of the twentieth century, Julian Huxley's (1887-1975) theses concerning the evolutionary meaning and importance of learning and education for the human species. This topic has great…

In this paper I chart the origins of modern day "biopedagogy" through an analysis of two historically specific figures of abnormality: the nervous child and the degenerate. These two figures form the positive (hygienic) and negative (eugenic) surfaces of biopolitics in education, sustained and articulated through the category of immunization. By…

The debate about the relevance of human genetics knowledge to everyday life has been marked by fluctuations of interest and enthusiasm. The negative impact of eugenics on the public consciousness suppressed dialogue between geneticists and the public for most of the second half of the 20th century (Ridley, 1999). For the most part, nongeneticists…

The Nobel Prize winning scientist James Watson was vilified when his views on the supposedly inherent deficiencies of black people became public. The scientific establishment, mainstream media and politicians joined a chorus of disapproval that would seem to evidence a widespread rejection of the old myths of racially ordered intelligence.…

While the mainline eugenics movement in early 20th century was closely associated with racism and the European Holocaust and was present in biology textbooks in the early 20th century, the following article finds that a transformed eugenics could be found the U.S. science curriculum by mid-century. The following article analyzes the content of 73…

This article advocates for socially just pedagogies in higher education to challenge senses of normalcy that perpetuate elitist academic attitudes towards the inclusion of disabled students. Normalcy is equated here with an everyday eugenics, which heralds a non-disabled person without "defects", or impairments, as the ideal norm. This…

From its inception in 1891 to present day, California's state youth corrections system has been mired in violence and abuse. In 1914, IQ testing and eugenics at state juvenile facilities resulted in the forced sterilization of poor, primarily non-white youth. In 1939, the suspicious suicide of a 13-year-old boy, the maltreatment of Latino youth,…

This essay reviews key controversies in the history of the Darwinian research tradition: the Wilberforce-Huxley debate in 1860, early twentieth-century debates about the heritability of acquired characteristics and the consistency of Mendelian genetics with natural selection; the 1925 Scopes trial about teaching evolution; tensions about race,…