Eugenics, Sex and the State

Description

Eugenics, Sex and the State

18-19 January 2007
Venue: Latimer Room, Clare College, Cambridge

This conference is the second event of the Eugenics group, a project funded by CRASSH. Set up in October 2005, the group had a workshop in March 2006.

The aim of the project is to bring together those working on eugenics, and the associated fields of heredity and degeneration, in order to identify both common ground and specificities that obtain for different national contexts, and to identify central research questions; to use this as a basis for solidly based comparative work on these topics.

The project aims to develop work in the field of the history and reception of eugenics and related subjects. Our main interest is in the period 1900-1950, but extends to the related areas of heredity, degeneration and psychometrics. Our focus is on how eugenics existed, was received and developed in specific ways in different countries, according to period, national context, political climate, interaction with other disciplines, and other eugenic associations. A core of international thinkers (Wells, Ellis, Russell) provided works that fostered an interest in eugenics in a variety of countries such as Spain, Hungary and China, in a way that is distinct from the development and nature of eugenics in Western and Northern European countries and the US, already charted by historians. The work of this project aims to map local variation in a way that allows further nuancing of mainline research carried out already, highlighting difference, identifying common points, and raising general questions.