What was eugenics?
Did it ever really go away? These questions are surprisingly hard to answer. Feminists, progressive activists, and historians of science have addressed these questions in very different ways. The answer matters more and more as we move increasingly toward a scientific and social framework once thought discredited, that genes matter a great deal in determining the sort of people we are. New technologies raise the spectre of made-to-order babies for the very rich, while also opening up new possibilities for non-nuclear families–lesbian and gay parents, or families where gestational and genetic relatedness derive from different parents. All of this raises new questions about adoption–overseas and domestic–and how we see children and adults with disabilities. The course will examine the proposition that we need a more nuanced grammar of eugenics, genetic determinism, and reproductive technology, one that takes into account the possibility that they span the political spectrum from the h
