Gender and the Body Series, Edinburgh University Press
It is often assumed that the eugenics propaganda and involuntary sterilisation programs of the early 20th century, aimed at those with physical and mental ‘defects’ ceased after World War II. However, unethical eugenic experimentation and practice aimed at the poor, the promiscuous, the illiterate, the sexually deviant, the dangerous and the incarcerated continued in countries such as America and Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s. Non-consensual, compulsory sterilisations and coercive eugenics state practices have continued in the C21st.
Contemporary immigration controls aimed to exclude the entry of undesirable others into ‘near perfect societies’ and discourses of developing world overpopulation suggest that postwar social policy continues ideas and mechanisms incubated within the eugenics movement. Likewise, recent discourse in relation to COVID-19 has highlighted discussions about the shameful history of unethical experimentation and surgery upon BAME communities and their pervasive mistrust of clinical research.
We invite chapters that examine the ways in which representations of the body and gender within literature and visual culture (including film, television, graphic novels, comics, and video games) from the eighteenth century to the present day have engaged with and challenged political, religious, cultural and social attitudes towards eugenics, genetic ancestries and genetic technologies. Contributors may focus upon the ways in which genetic technologies have enabled individual choices and challenged deeply entrenched social issues such as racism, sexism and heterosexism.
We welcome original chapters that address topic areas and questions such as:
- ‘Eugenics’ (well born), ‘dysgenics’ (poor birth)
- ‘Liberal’ eugenics and/or state sanctioned policies
- Beauty, health, morality, disability, utopian bodies
- Sexual selection, sexual hygiene, birth control
- Racial hierarchies, degeneration
- Criminality, sexual ‘disorders’
- Future bodies, cyborgs, transhumanism, post-sexuality
- Epigenetics
- Ectogenesis
- Eugenics survivor narratives
- Medical genetics and genetic engineering
- Genetic inheritance, ancestral histories
- Human futures: the body, sexuality, gender, race,
- Ethics and human rights
How to Submit:
Chapter Proposal Submission Deadline: 1 November 2020. Please include (i) an abstract (no more than 200 words), (ii) a chapter proposal of 1,000 to 2,000 words clearly explaining the aims and concerns of your proposed chapter, (iii) a copy of your C.V and (iv) your contact details.
Full Chapter Submission Deadline: 1 April 2021
Guidelines for Submissions: Final chapter word length: 8,000 words max.
Contact Details: Please send your submissions to the editors at: genetics.eds@gmail.com