Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Eugenics – United States'
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1
Williams, Cameron. "A Study of the United States Influence on German Eugenics." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2020. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3781.
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This thesis is a study of the influence and effects that the United States had upon Germany from the rise of eugenics to its fall following the end of World War II. There are three stages to this study. First, I examine the rise of eugenics in the United States from its inception to the end of World War I and the influence it had upon Germany. Then I examine the interwar era along with the popularization of eugenics within both countries before concluding with the Second World War and post war era.
My thesis focuses on both the active and passive influences that the United States had upon German eugenics and racial hygiene in the twentieth century. This study uses a wide range of primary and secondary sources. Many of the authors are experts in their field while the visuals are a window into understanding how eugenics was spread to the public.
2
Lavery, Colm Raymond. "Geography and eugenics in the United States and Britain, 1900-1950." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.707810.
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Eugenics has a complicated history. In the United States and Britain biologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, political theorists and others were involved in eugenic discussions. But historians of eugenics have all but neglected to tell the geographer's story. This thesis discusses the role of four geographers: Robert DeCourcy Ward, Ellsworth Huntington, Stephen Sargent Visher and Herbert John Fleure. My main contention is that not only did these geographers play active roles in the eugenics movement, but that they used geographical theories and methodologies to bolster their eugenic ideology. Ward, as a leader of the immigration restriction movement in the United States, presented geographical solutions to eugenic problems; Huntington was a vocal advocate of understanding race through a geographical lens; Visher forwarded the claim that intelligence had a particular geography; and Fleure was interested in the history of race and migrations. These case studies serve as detailed examples of how the history of geography and the history of eugenics have intertwined in both Britain and the United States.
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Wunderlich, Jo (Jo Parks). "Echoes of Eugenics : Roe v Wade." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279248/.
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Traces the inter-related histories of the eugenics movement and birth control, with an emphasis on abortion. Discusses Sarah Weddington's arguments and the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v Wade. Straws the eugenic influences in the case and asserts that these influences caused the decision to be less than decisive.
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Guest, Lacey. ""A Special Relationship of Peculiar Intimacy": Marriage Education in the United States, 1920s-1960s." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/23808.
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Marriage education emerged in universities across the United States in the 1920s as a response to a perceived “marriage crisis.” Over the next several decades, marriage educators shaped marriage course content to reflect student interests and maintain relevance to students’ lives. With the goal of saving marriage from the abstract forces of modernity, faculty initially targeted a specific demographic: white, middle-class, college students. This thesis chronicles the trajectory of marriage education as it shifted from a mechanism of positive eugenics to a vehicle by which black students in the South could access rights of citizenship in the post-WWII period. What began as a method of civic exclusion with roots in the eugenic movement transformed into a means through which Southern black citizens asserted their rights to education, marriage, sexuality, and family. This democratization of education for citizenship reflected the diverse uses of marriage education from the 1920s through the 1960s.
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Stalvey, Marissa Leigh Slaughter. "Love is Not Blind: Eugenics, Blindness, and Marriage in the United States, 1840-1940." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1395944636.
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Brabble, Jessica Marie. "Save the Babies: Progressive Women and the Fight for Child Welfare in the United States, 1912-1929." Thesis, Virginia Tech, 2021. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/104021.
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This project examines two organizations--the Better Babies Bureau and the Children's Bureau--created by Progessive women in the early twentieth century to combat high infant mortality rates, improve prenatal and postnatal care, and better child welfare. The Better Babies Bureau, founded in 1913 by journalists from the Woman's Home Companion magazine, and the Children's Bureau, founded as a federal agency in 1912, used similar campaigns to raise awareness of these child welfare problems in the early 1900s; where they differed, however, is in their ultimate goals. The Children's Bureau sought to improve long-term medical care and infant mortality rates for women regardless of race or socioeconomic status; I analyze how they worked directly with midwives and health officials to provide better care for mothers and children. The Better Babies Bureau, in comparison, catered specifically to white women through prize-based contests and eugenics rhetoric. Through their better baby contests, they promoted the idea that disabilities and defects should be eliminated in children in order to create a better future. By the late 1910s, these two organizations were utilizing nationwide campaigns to appeal to mothers through either consumerism or health conferences. I argue that although the Better Babies Bureau made a greater cultural impact, the Children's Bureau made a longer lasting—and farther reaching—impact on infant mortality rates by making healthcare more accessible for both rural and urban women.Master of Arts
In the early twentieth century, many Americans became concerned with the number of children dying before age one. This thesis examines two different organizations that were created in an attempt to reduce these infant mortality rates, improve prenatal and postnatal care, and better child welfare. These two organizations, the Children's Bureau and the Better Babies Bureau, were created and run by Progressive women who took vastly different approaches to raising awareness of these problems. The Children's Bureau worked directly with health and government officials to improve child welfare and healthcare. Meanwhile, the Better Babies Bureau utilized contests to convince mothers that defects and disabilities needed to be eliminated in their children. In this thesis, I argue that the Children's Bureau was ultimately far more effective by appealing to a wider audience, creating a plan for long-term medical care, and improving access to prenatal and postnatal care for women.
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Rust, Jennifer. "Propagating Perfection: Eugenic Sterilization at the Utah State Training School, 1935 - 1974." DigitalCommons@USU, 2017. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/5338.
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Compulsory sterilization as a tool of eugenics occurred in the United States from before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its’ constitutionality in 1927 until the early 1970s. Initial justification for removing a person’s ability to procreate was rooted in hereditarian assertions that disability was transmitted from parent to offspring, and incorporated an economic argument that individuals with disabilities placed a financial burden on the state for care. Due to scientific deconstruction of the hereditarian argument, rationalization for sterilization evolved into an anxiety over the perceived inability of the disabled to parent. The state of Utah sterilized 738 individuals with intellectual disabilities from 1935 to 1974. This paper explores how Utah was similar to other states in terms of implementing compulsory sterilization through the establishment of the Utah State Training School and the philosophy of its leadership team.
8
Hart, Bradley William. "British, German, and American eugenicists in transnational context, c. 1900-1939." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/283886.
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Fulkerson, Dikuua Kelly Jo. "[Un]informed Consent: Eugenics, Forced Sterilization and Medical Violence in the Jim Crow United States and Apartheid Southern Africa." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1560981650973904.
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Fair, Alexandra Kathryn. "“THE PEOPLE WHO NEED US READ BETWEEN THE LINES”: THE FACES OF EUGENIC IDEOLOGY IN THE POST-WWII UNITED STATES." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1556874590527973.
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Abril, Samantha E. "Sterilized by the State: A Feminist Analysis of Eugenics, Forced Sterilization, and Reparations in North Carolina." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/576.
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Although, the histories of forced sterilizations and eugenics practices have been all but forgotten by most, these subjects gained national attention again when the state of North Carolina repealed its sterilization law in 2003. The history of forced sterilization in the United States began with a eugenics based demand to wipe out populations that were constructed as inferior. The evolution of who was sterilized shifted in accordance to changing national social perception of who was ‘unfit’ to reproduce, from the developmentally disabled to ‘immoral’ and ‘irresponsible’ women.
North Carolina has also taken unprecedented steps towards providing reparations for the living victims of the statute. The history, current sentiments, and unique components of compulsory sterilization in North Carolina help to illustrate why the government has taken such proactive steps in offering restitution while others have not.
What happened in North Carolina and throughout the eugenics movement in the United States are poignant examples of the power of social constructions.
Social constructions allows those with power, in this case the state, to enforce them, using policy and other mechanisms, to divide up members of society. With this power to divide groups of people comes the ability to use this constructed sense of otherness as a means to control and mistreat these populations.
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Cruz, Rodrigo Andrade da. "Oito votos contra um: o desenvolvimento da ciência eugenista nos Estados Unidos." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2012. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/13268.
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The present study focused on the development and institutionalization of the science of eugenics in the United States during the first decades of the 20th century. For this purpose, we focused on the ideas of Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944), his work team, and the institutional networks he contributed to establish. Davenport initially learned the notions and methods developed for eugenic research by Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Karl Pearson (1857-1936), who essentially applied statistical methods. However, by the same time the studies by Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) were rediscovered giving impetus to the incipient field of genetics and were also assimilated by Davenport into his eugenic project. Together with a discussion of the overall historical context that favored the development of eugenics in the US, we analyzed the works by Davenport as well as by some of his main collaborators, such as psychologist Henry Goddard (1866-1957) and eugenicist Harry Laughlin (1880-1943), as well as the repercussions of eugenics in US society in the early decades of the 20th century
A presente pesquisa abordou o desenvolvimento e institucionalização da ciência eugenista nos Estados Unidos nas primeiras décadas do século XX. Para tanto, focou-se nos trabalhos de Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944), seu grupo de trabalho e as redes institucionais que estabeleceu. Inicialmente, Davenport assimilou os conceitos e métodos de pesquisa eugenista desenvolvidos por Francis Galton (1822-1911) e Karl Pearson (1857-1936), que aplicaram basicamente uma abordagem estatística. No entanto, no mesmo período, são redescobertos os trabalhos de Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), associados à incipiente pesquisa genética, também assimilados por Davenport no seu projeto eugenista. Junto de uma discussão do contexto histórico geral que favoreceu as teses eugenistas nos EUA no período sob consideração, foram analisadas as publicações científicas de Davenport e de alguns de seus principais colaboradores, como o psicólogo Henry Goddard (1866-1957) e o eugenista Harry Laughlin (1880-1943), assim como as repercussões desse desenvolvimento na sociedade norte-americana nas três primeiras décadas do século XX
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Free, Jennifer Lynelle. "Inherently Undesirable: American Identity and the Role of Negative Eugenics in the Education of Visually Impaired and Blind Students in Ohio, 1870-1930." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1353009941.
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Krapf, Elizabeth Maria. "Euthanasia, the Ethics of Patient Care and the Language of Propaganda." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/606.
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This thesis is an examination of euthanasia, eugenics, the ethic of patient care, and linguistic propaganda in the Second World War. The examination of euthanasia discusses not only the history and involvement of the facility at Hadamar in Germany, but also discuss the current euthanasia debate. Euthanasia in World War II arose out of the Nazi desire to cleanse the Reich and was greatly influenced by the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century. Eugenics was built up to include anyone considered undesirable and unworthy of life and killed many thousands of people before the invasion of allied troops in 1944. Paramount to euthanasia is forced sterilization, the ethic of patient care, and how the results of the research conducted on euthanasia victims before their deaths should be used. The Nazis were able to change the generally accepted terms that researchers use to describe their experiments and this change affected how modern doctors and researchers use the terms in current research. This thesis includes research conducted in Germany and the United States from varied resources.
15
Rembis, Michael A. "Breeding up the human herd: Gender, power, and eugenicsin Illinois, 1890-1940." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280328.
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This dissertation is a gendered analysis of the creation and attempted implementation of America's first eugenic commitment law. On 1 July 1915, Illinois became the first state to enact a law that stated that any individual found to be "feebleminded" by a competent expert could be committed indefinitely. Women reformers played a critical role in the creation and attempted implementation of Illinois commitment law, and although the language of the law itself remained gender neutral, the arguments used to legitimize the creation of the law and the actual implementation of the law remained highly gender. Young poor and working-class women, not men, remained at the center of the debate over eugenic institutionalization in Illinois. Although Mark Haller argued in 1963 that indefinite institutionalization was one of the most popular eugenic reform measures in the United States, scholars are just beginning to make a detailed historical analysis of the relationships among gender, eugenics, and institutionalization. Illinois provides an excellent opportunity to build on this emerging body of scholarship. As many scholars have shown, Illinois was in the vanguard on most social reform issues. It was also a place where women played a significant role in social reform. Reformers in Illinois created the country's first juvenile court and were among the early advocates of the creation of a separate municipal court. They were also pioneers in labor and education reform, as well as myriad other social issues. The willingness of both female and male reformers in Illinois to experiment with modern state-sponsored social reform measures led to their eventual adoption of the eugenic commitment law, which they viewed as yet another way of using science and the state to improve society. Analyzing the creation and attempted implementation of Illinois' commitment law will expand our understanding of the relationship between "progressivism" and eugenics and, more importantly, our understanding of the role of women and gender in early-twentieth-century eugenics. This dissertation covers not only the legislative process and debates surrounding the eugenic commitment law, but also the rise of "scientific" testing and the emergence and transformation of sociology, psychology, and social work; the contested definition of expertise; the creation and transformation of mental health institutions; and the dynamics among the young subjects of eugenic institutionalization, their parents, and those experts and reformers responsible for their incarceration.
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RAMSDEN, Edmund. "Between quality and quantity : eugenics and the evolution of American Demography as a scientific discipline, 1927-1972." Doctoral thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1814/5358.
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Defence date: 20 September 2002Examining board: Gianfranco Poggi, Supervisor, European University Institute, Florence ; Jaap Dronkers, European University Institute, Florence ; Troy Duster, University of California at Berkeley ; Massimo Livi-Bacci, Università degli Studi di Firenze ; Arpad Szakolczai, University College, Cork
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
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Voborníková, Pavla. "Eugenika ve Spojených státech a její vliv na nacistické Německo." Master's thesis, 2013. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-321928.
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The thesis "American Eugenics and Its Impact on Nazi Germany" is a study about influence of the American eugenics movement on the racial policies of Nazi Germany. The origin of the eugenics movement is in the early 20th century. At that time, the movement also began to cooperate at the international level. After World War II, the German eugenicists were excluded from international co-operation for a while. During this period, German eugenicists began to cooperate with the American movement. German eugenicists and Adolf Hitler with other future leaders of Nazi Germany adored American immigration laws that limited immigration of "defective" ethnic groups to the United States. American eugenics movement became also a model for its research and eugenics sterilization laws in the majority of American states. This study describes the extent of this cooperation. American eugenics movement was also related to euthenics and birth control movement. The study also focused on this connection and explains why the birth control movement was not connected with the eugenics movement in the Weimar Republic, then Nazi Germany, although, the movement cooperated with eugenicists at the international level. The study covers the time from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the Second World War.
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true, Caleb J. "Eugenothenics: The Literary Connection Between Domesticity and Eugenics." 2011. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/730.
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This is an analysis of the connection between the domestic science and eugenics. While it is made clear by historians such as Megan Elias and Kathy Cooke that there is ample connection between eugenics and euthenics, there has not been as comprehensive an analysis of the direct connections between domestic science and eugenics. Close examination of literature from the domestic science movement reveals the shared goals of domestic science and eugenics. The domestic science movement was also a necessary precursor to the euthenics movement, not simply a “re-envisioning” of home economics by Ellen Richards. When Richards died, her euthenic ideals would continue to be a part of domestic science in the early decades of the twentieth century. This analysis will contribute in part to the understanding of how, through rhetoric, nations can progress towards more unsightly policies of social engineering from seemingly benign beginnings. Eugenics may not have origins in domestic science, a field of homemaking, cookery, etiquette, and child-rearing, but eugenics certainly shares goals, purposes, and a vision with domestic science.
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Bragg, Abigail Nicole. "The Eugenic Origins of Indiana's Muscatatuck Colony: 1920-2005." Thesis, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/24083.
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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)This thesis examines the widely unknown history and origins of Muscatatuck Colony, located in Butlerville, Indiana. The national eugenics movement impacted the United States politically, medically, legally, and socially. While the United States established mental institutions prior to the eugenics movement, many institutions, including ones in Indiana, were founded as eugenic tools to advance the agenda of achieving a “purer” society. Muscatatuck was one such state institution founded during this national movement. I explore various elements that made the national eugenics movement effective, how Indiana helped advance the movement, and how all these elements impacted Muscatatuck’s founding. I investigate the language used to describe people that were considered “mentally inferior,” specifically who the “feeble-minded” were and how Americans were grouped into this category. I research commonly held beliefs by eugenicists of this time-period, eugenic methods implemented, and how these discussions and actions led to the establishment of Muscatatuck in 1920. Muscatatuck Colony, though a byproduct of the national eugenics movement, outlived this scientific effort. Toward the mid and late twentieth century, Muscatatuck leadership executed institutional change to best reflect American society’s evolving thoughts on mental health and how best to treat people with mental disabilities. Muscatatuck Colony reveals a complicated narrative of how best to treat or care for people within these institutions, a complex narrative that many mental institutions share.
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Whynacht, Ardath J. "The Road to Health is Paved with 'Good Intentions': A Cautionary Three Part Tale for Global Health in the Spirit of Reproductive Justice." 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10222/13167.
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The following paper explores three case studies of large-scale forced and coercive surgical sterilizations on indigenous women in Canada, the United States and Peru. The author utilizes settler colonialism as explanation for the complicity of these states in reproductive rights abuses and identifies some risk factors for reproductive rights abuses in future social welfare and global health aid projects.
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Hubbard, Sara-Marni. "A National Threat: Eugenic Perspectives on Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States During the Great Depression." Thesis, 2011. http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/35987/1/Hubbard_MA_S2012.pdf.
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This thesis explores developments that occurred in American eugenics during the late 1920s. Specifically, through looking at eugenic and medical literature, this research explores the shift in focus towards financial issues in American eugenics during the Great Depression. Like a great deal of American society, the American eugenics community came to frame many of their arguments through the lens of financial issues. At the same time, Mexican immigrants were the largest group of racialized Others entering the United States. Eugenicists aimed their new focus towards Mexican immigration and a great deal of eugenics literature highlighted how much Mexican immigration purportedly cost the white American public. In exploring how Mexican-American racial identities were constructed and re-framed by eugenicists and other members of the scientific community during the Great Depression, this thesis also considers the motivation for these developments and in doing so address a silence within existent historical literature on American eugenics.
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Friedman, Judith Ellen. "Coming full circle: the development, rise, fall, and return of the concept of anticipation in hereditary disease." Thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1794.
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This dissertation examines the history of the creation and development of the concept of
anticipation, a pattern of heredity found in several diseases (e.g. Huntington’s disease and
myotonic dystrophy), in which an illness manifests itself earlier and often more severely
in successive generations. It reconstructs major arguments in twentieth-century debates
about anticipation and analyzes the relations between different research communities and
schools of thought. Developments in cutting-edge medicine, biology, and genetics are
analyzed; many of these developments were centered in Britain, but saw significant
contributions by people working in France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and
North America.
Chapter one traces precursor notions in psychiatric and hereditarian thought from
1840 to the coining of the term ‘anticipation’ by the ophthalmologist Edward Nettleship
in 1905. Key roles in the following chapters are played by several figures. Prior to World
War II, these include: the neuropathologist F.W. Mott, whose advocacy during 1911-
1927 led to anticipation being called “Mott’s law”; the biometrician and eugenicist Karl
Pearson, who opposed Mott on methodological and political grounds; and two politically
and theoretically opposed Germans – Ernst Rüdin, a leading psychiatrist and eugenicist
who came to reject anticipation, and Richard Goldschmidt, a geneticist who offered a
peculiar Mendelian explanation. The British psychiatrist and human geneticist, Lionel
Penrose, makes a first interwar appearance, but becomes crucial to the story after World
War II due to his systematic dismissal of anticipation, which discredited the notion on
orthodox Mendelian grounds. The final chapters highlight the contributions of Dutch
neurologist Christiaan Höweler, whose 1980s work demonstrated a major hole in
Penrose’s reasoning, and British geneticist Peter Harper, whose research helped
demonstrate that expanding trinucleotide repeats accounted for the transgenerational
worsening without contradicting Mendel and resurrected anticipation as scientifically
legitimate. Reception of the concept of anticipation is traced across the century through
the examination of textbooks used in different fields.
This dissertation argues against established positions regarding the history of the
concept, including claims that anticipation’s association with eugenics adequately
explains the rejection of the notion after 1945. Rejected, in fact, by many eugenicists
from 1912, anticipation was used by physicians until the 1960s.