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OverviewMocking Eugenics explores the opposition to eugenic discourse mounted by twentieth-century American artists seeking to challenge and destabilize what they viewed as a dangerous body of thought. Focusing on their wielding of humor to attack the contemporaneous science of heredity and the totalitarian impulse informing it, this book confronts the conflict between eugenic theories presented as grounded in scientific and metaphysical truth and the satirical treatment of eugenics as not only absurdly illogical but also antithetical to democratic ideals and inimical to humanistic values. Through analyses of the films of Charlie Chaplin and the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Anita Loos, and Wallace Thurman, Mocking Eugenics examines their use of laughter to dismantle the rhetoric of perfectionism, white supremacy, and nativism that shaped mainstream expressions of American patriotism and normative white masculinity. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, literature, cinema, sociology, humor, and American studies. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Ewa Barbara Luczak (University of Warsaw, Poland)Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd Imprint: Routledge Weight: 0.453kg ISBN: 9781032000909ISBN 10: 1032000902 Pages: 178 Publication Date: 31 May 2023 Audience: College/higher education , Tertiary & Higher Education Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. “I am for the little man”: Charlie Chaplin’s comedies and the eugenic American 2. Is the “strenuous life” a pleasant life? Euthenic efficiency, racial duty, and the phenomenon of Anita Loos 3. Eugenic marriages and psychometrics in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Fie! Fie! Fi-Fi! and The Vegetable 4. Cosmopolitanism vs. eugenic racial nationalism: Ernest Hemingway’s The Torrents of Spring and Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race 5. For “the betterment of the human family”? California sterilizations, Wallace Thurman, and Tomorrow’s Children Conclusions: Could it have happened here? The borderline existence of anti-eugenic satireReviewsAuthor InformationTab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |