MA, Kent State University, 2023, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This thesis analyzes the international eugenics movement and retains a particular focus on Harry Hamilton Laughlin, the prominent American eugenicist and superintendent of the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Office (ERO) and his world government proposal. Despite previous historiographical trends which privilege nationalistic or mere comparative models of eugenics, this thesis follows a truly transnational model (reflecting the work of Daniel Rodgers on Progressivism), in order to demonstrate that both eugenic knowledge and legislation was shared internationally across both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, this thesis argues that Harry Laughlin's world government proposal, in which he sought to apply international eugenics to world government, was not only a logical extension of his eugenic goals, but also his attempt to repair his perceived issues with the League of Nations. Overall, this thesis seeks to shed light on the international nature of the eugenics movement not only in the historical record, but in order to better combat eugenics' legacy through an international anti-eugenics movement.

Committee: Kenneth Bindas (Advisor); Matthew Crawford (Committee Member); Kevin Adams (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Comparative Studies

"The Future of American Memory" focuses on media preservation in the United States since the 1930s. It works at the intersection of American studies, critical race studies, visual culture, and media archaeology to trace the historical emergence of the desire to preserve media permanently across three key moments in American history. Part I addresses the 1930s, when scientists carried out the first systematic studies on the causes of deterioration in paper and microfilm records. By the end of the decade, American corporations used knowledge from these studies to build the first two time capsules that aimed to preserve a permanent record of civilization's achievements. Part II addresses the 1950s, when Cold War paranoia about nuclear attacks led government agencies, banks, insurance companies, and other corporations to invest in secure, bombproof, underground storage for their records. Part III addresses the contemporary moment, from the mid-1990s to the present. My case study is the Bettmann Archive of historical photographs, preserved at the Corbis Film Preservation Facility in a securitized, refrigerated vault located 220 feet underground. Corbis, an image licensing company owned solely by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, refrigerates and digitizes the photographs in the Bettmann Archive in order to preserve them for 10,000 to 15,000 years. In my Epilogue, I discuss geographer/artist Trevor Paglen's project, The Last Pictures. Paglen micro-etched 100 images onto a silicon disc, then launched it into outer space on the communications satellite Echostar XVI, where it will orbit the earth, he claims, for several billion years. I conclude that a "preservation complex" has emerged in American culture since the 1930s. This complex is both institutional--a proliferating network of securitized, temperature-controlled spaces for preserving media--and psychic--the anxieties of corporate and state scientists, librarians, and archivists have to some degree become the anxieties of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Barry Shank Ph.D. (Advisor); Ruby Tapia Ph.D. (Advisor); Kris Paulsen Ph.D. (Committee Member); Hugh Urban Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; History; Science History; Technology

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2024, History

This thesis argues for an interdisciplinary examination of the origins and subsequent appearance of the Wassermann blood test, the first test developed for detecting syphilis, in eugenics initiatives and medicolegal mandates. When this seemingly impartial medical tool intersected with preexisting social and cultural biases regarding syphilis its story became one of blood purity initiatives for the preservation and proliferation of white normativity. Reframing the Wassermann as more than a passive medical tool highlights how ostensibly impartial medical processes can produce institutional violence in masculinized spaces of control. While the Wassermann offered a source of hope for protecting against syphilitic infection, in application, the serodiagnostic tool served as a source of scientific validation when misapplied as a quantifiable method for justifying medicolegal interventions in the 20th century US. This examination traces the bioethical legacy of the Wassermann from its 1906 development in Berlin to its appearance in eugenics-based legal mandates in the US. Through an analysis of scientific publications and court records at archives across the East Coast this paper centers those who didn't benefit from the Wassermann and investigates how scientific authority derived from an imperfect diagnostic test was harnessed to reproduce and reinforce the sociocultural biases that linger today.

Committee: Kimberly Hamlin (Advisor); Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member); Amanda McVety (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; Gender; History; Law; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Public Health; Science History; Technology; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, English

As a topic of study, utopia is often broken into three aspects: utopian social theory, intentional communities, and literature. Thus, a study of utopia best suits an interdisciplinary approach. While utopian scholars have often accepted the invitation for diverse approaches, there is one unifying aspect of the three aspects of utopia yet considered. In this dissertation, I posit a theory of utopian and dystopian rhetoric which explains the affective, persuasive dimension of each of utopia's aspects. Although I propose a wider application of utopian and dystopian rhetoric, I narrow my focus in this dissertation to investigate the connections between utopianism and eugenics. I analyze how nineteenth-century eugenicists leverage utopian and dystopian rhetoric to promote eugenic practices and beliefs. I argue that the hierarchy of eugenics and utopia – the privileging of certain populations and rejection of others as being suited for the future – are assured and enforced through ideological and repressive state apparatuses.

Committee: Amanpal Garcha (Advisor); Elizabeth Hewitt (Committee Member); James Phelan (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; British and Irish Literature; Literature

MA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

Many books have been written about Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe during the early twentieth century, the reasons for their emigration from their homelands, their journey to their new countries, and the circumstances in which they found themselves. These works often assume one of two approaches: the provision of a composite picture of the immigrant experience, replete with statistics and documentary evidence, sometimes drawing piecemeal from illustrative experiences of individuals to underscore a particular point or biographies or autobiographies, many of which focus on better educated, more literate, more politically active, or more (in)famous members of the Jewish community or on Holocaust survivors. In contrast to these approaches, I examine the lives of two Jewish immigrant families at the time of their immigration to the United States, one from what is now Belarus but was once in the Pale of Settlement, and the second from what is now Poland, but also once existed within the Russian Empire. These are my families, that of my paternal and maternal grandparents. By taking this approach, we can better understand how historical events and social discourse impacted and intertwined with the lives of individual immigrants and their families and how they navigated these then-current events. Each of these chapters examines their lived experience in the context of the larger events occurring around them, over which they had no control. Each chapter refuses to fit comfortably into the master narratives that have emerged over time with regard to Jewish immigration during this period and Jewish families in general: Jewish family cohesiveness, the absence of abuse within Jewish families, Jewish abstention from alcohol. Each chapter explores, as well, the possible impact, both conscious and unconscious, of the surrounding historical events on their decisionmaking and the impact of those decisions on their family members.

Committee: Elaine Frantz (Committee Chair); Brian Hayashi (Committee Member); Mary Ann Heiss (Committee Member); Sean Martin (Committee Member) Subjects: Families and Family Life; History; Judaic Studies

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2020, College of Education and Human Services

In a qualitative narrative study of 11 urban teacher education faculty who teach courses that prepare teacher candidates for field immersions in metro-urban schools, I problematized “whiteness” by asking participants what it meant to them in the contexts of their work in contact zones were teacher candidates and K-12 students meet. The research was shaped as an abolitionist justice project (Tuck & Yang, 2018, p. 8) and considered how “whiteness” might be deconstructed and decentered in urban teacher education. Participants described whiteness as both fixed phenotype and historical and social construct which causes harm and which requires intervention. In scenarios where the harm of whiteness was mitigated for non-white K-12 students and teacher candidates, participants described themselves in supportive rather than authoritative educational roles. The study reflects upon what might constitute one or more forms of abolitionist praxis which might have the utility to dismantle systemic white supremacy as well as to cease and desist in the oppression of children.

Committee: Anne Galletta (Committee Chair) Subjects: African American Studies; Education Policy; Educational Sociology; Ethnic Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, History

Called a “Mississippi Appendectomy” in some southern states and “la operacion” in Puerto Rico, coerced sterilization continued across America following World War II. Even after international condemnation of Nazi eugenic abuses, state Eugenics Boards continued sterilizing patients into the 1970s, particularly women. At the same time, eugenics organizations such as the Pioneer Fund financed new research in the service of white supremacy. This thesis contends that eugenic ideology never died. Instead advocates simply rearticulated eugenic terminology to sustain hierarchical conversations about the relative value of human reproduction in increasingly public spaces. Linguistic shifts in the eugenics movement coincided with the development of the medical economy, rising resistance to the Civil Rights Movement and the eventual dissolution of state eugenics boards. At every stage, discourse that successfully reframed eugenic rhetoric about human difference as fiscal or social conservativism allowed eugenicists to reconstitute themselves in factions of the conservative movement.

Committee: Nishani Frazier (Advisor); Kimberly Hamlin (Committee Member); Helen Sheumaker (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

Patient narrative is often an undervalued or dismissed genre of writing in the field of literary criticism, largely because the hermeneutics of suspicion leads critics to see these texts as “misery memoirs,” as Ann Jurecic suggests. In this thesis, I argue for a new approach to reading and to criticism that moves away from the hermeneutics of suspicion and instead seeks to find conversations between patient narratives, case narratives, and popular or dominant medical and scientific texts. This shift would have readers focusing not on the ways in which an author might manipulate a story but instead on what the reader might learn from intently examining the resulting conversations. In doing so, I do not argue for a switch in the hierarchy—from doctor-patient to patient-doctor—but instead argue that both patient and case narratives have value; without both texts, we cannot have a full picture of what it is like to live with illness. Making my argument through historical examination, I prove that by examining Charlotte Perkins Gilman's patient narratives—those found in her letters, her diaries, and her autobiography as well as in “The Yellow Wallpaper”—alongside medical and scientific texts from her time, we can not only deepen and nuance current interpretations of these texts but we can also uncover motivations that may not be immediately apparent. While “The Yellow Wallpaper,” for example, has been considered as a critique of patriarchal medicine, a horror story, and a liberation text—among others—it has never been explicitly examined as a patient narrative. This focus allows us to delve deeper into the conversation created between “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Gilman's nonfiction narratives; I focus particularly on how we can see the eugenic arguments within “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how these arguments are connected to Gilman's anxieties about marriage, motherhood, and her usefulness in society. While ignoring patient narratives makes literary critics and histor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Scanlan (Committee Chair); Mary Kate Hurley (Committee Member); Myrna Perez Sheldon (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Families and Family Life; Gender; Gender Studies; Health; Health Care; Health Sciences; History; Literature; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Mental Health; Philosophy of Science; Psychology; Rhetoric; Science History; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, English

This dissertation reveals how cognitive disability's formal and rhetorical potential developed in the U.S. from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, detailing the ways in which writers determined the reader's engagement with cognitive others. Scientific pathology inspired literary authors to experiment with narrative mechanics. Conversely, literature and popular nonfiction revealed to psychologists unrecognized features of cognitive identity as well as narrative's methodological and political potential. Cognitive disability, never fully assimilable, emerges as a force that can reorganize narrative events and aestheticize their telling. My work challenges theories of disability that prefigure difference as fixed or known in narrative. Great authors redefine disability as a force that is always coming to be known. I introduce a heuristic to help scholars understand this process, specifically how stories introduce tenuous ways of representing and narrating disability, put forth conflicting ontological claims about the mind, and withhold what can be known about disability at key moments. As readers struggle to pin down what exactly disability is, narrative places them in a space where they can reflect not only on the abilities of the disabled subject, but their own.

Committee: William Marling Dr. (Advisor); Athena Vrettos Dr. (Committee Member); Kimberly Emmons Dr. (Committee Member); Jonathan Sadowsky Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; Literature; Rhetoric

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Popular Culture

During the over fifty-year history of The X-Men comic books and the numerous stories told within the various series, the mutants have been intentionally written as metaphors for how ethnic, racial, sexual, religious, and cultural minorities are treated in the United States. During that same time, the writers also unintentionally mirror deaf individuals and Deaf Culture in their portrayal of mutants and X-Men. Considering the vast number of stories in existence, I focus on the early works of Stan Lee, Grant Morrison's time as author of New X-Men, Joss Whedon's time as author of Astonishing X-Men, and Matt Fraction's time as author of Uncanny X-Men. In this thesis, I perform a close reading of these four authors' works and compare them to the history of the deaf and Deaf in America. In this close reading, I found three recurring themes within The X-Men comics that paralleled Deaf Culture: Geography, Colonization, and Culture. Both groups' origins lie in the residential schools that were founded to provide a supportive educational environment. From this environment, a culture developed and spread as students graduated. These same schools and cultures came under similar attacks from the dominant culture. They survived the attacks and have grown stronger since. Throughout, I use theorists such as Gramsci and Althusser alongside Deaf Studies scholars such as Lennard Davis and Douglas Baynton to analyze these themes, parallels, and events. These parallels potentially allow readers to be more accepting and understanding of Deaf Culture because they introduce Deaf Culture to the reader in the familiar setting of the superhero comic narrative.

Committee: Jeremy Wallach Ph. D. (Advisor); Jeffrey Brown Ph. D. (Committee Member); Katherine Meizel Ph. D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative

Master of Arts in History, Youngstown State University, 2016, Department of Humanities

Filipino culture was founded through the amalgamation of many ethnic and cultural influences, such as centuries of Spanish colonization and the immigration of surrounding Asiatic groups as well as the long nineteenth century's Race of Nations. However, the events of 1898 to 1914 brought a sense of national unity throughout the seven thousand islands that made the Philippine archipelago. The Philippine-American War followed by United States occupation, with the massive domestic support on the ideals of Manifest Destiny, introduced the notion of distinct racial ethnicities and cemented the birth of one national Philippine identity. The exploration on the Philippine American War and United States occupation resulted in distinguishing the three different analyses of identity each influenced by events from 1898 to 1914: 1) The identity of Filipinos through the eyes of U.S., an orientalist study of the “us” versus “them” heavily influenced by U.S. propaganda; 2) the identity of the Filipinos themselves—the Spanish American War introduced an awareness of Philippine national identity, and the Philippine American War cemented this idea; 3) associating with a national identity—emphasized in the papers of David P. Barrows, William Howard Taft's Manila Superintendent of Schools. Barrows introduced U.S. citizens to the perception of Filipinos as “Negritos,” his own personal ethnographic study of possible African blood within all of the Filipino classes. Barrows' patriotic loyalty to U.S. ideals of Manifest Destiny can be comparatively analyzed through the experiences of David Fagen, an African American soldier from Florida, and several of his fellow African American soldiers of the twenty-fourth regiment who defected from the United States military to join the ranks of Philippine Revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo.

Committee: L. Diane Barnes PhD (Advisor); David Simonelli PhD (Committee Member); Helene Sinnreich PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History; American Studies; Asian American Studies; Asian Studies; Black History; Cultural Anthropology; Ethnic Studies; History

M.A. (Master of Arts in Liberal Studies), Ohio Dominican University, 2015, Liberal Studies

An analysis of the judicial philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Jr. according to the standard of traditional American political theory as embodied by the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution.

Committee: Ann Hall Ph. D. (Committee Chair) Subjects: American History; Legal Studies; Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, English

Rehabilitation, Eugenics, and Institutionalization Discourses: Disability in American Literature, 1893-1941 explores how certain writers challenged prominent discourses--rehabilitation, eugenics, and institutionalization--in their respective literary works. Their stories create a larger intervention in understanding institutionalized discourses and practices in early twentieth century that advocated and reinforced the medical and scientific models, which viewed people with disabilities as needing to be fixed, cured, or institutionalized. Chapter 1 sets the historical contexts of the post World War I era, exploring how the trauma of war, the national economic decline, the increasing number of orthopedic surgeons, and the rise of industrialization all raised the national consciousness about persons with disabilities. It also discusses how scholars such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Alice Hall and others have contributed to the understanding of disability in literature. Chapter 2 analyzes how Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun addresses the disastrous consequences of war, and how medical and military professionals, as well as society, reacted to disabled veterans. Disabled veterans were required to overcome their disabilities, to be men, and become productive members of society to avoid stigmatizing attitudes. Trumbo's work complicates the straightforward reading of dominant cultural narratives by challenging national concerns about reproduction, production, and disability fostered by the Rehabilitation Movement during and after WWI. Chapter 3 examines how twentieth-century writers such as Eudora Welty, Mary Austin, William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, and Eugene O'Neill resisted and countered the endorsement of popular eugenic ideologies and discourses that fostered the concepts of the “degenerate” female body and of impoverished domestic spaces as portrayals of “bad blood,” and the disabled child as a burden and threat to family and state. Thei (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Debra Moddelmog Dr. (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: American Literature

Master of Liberal Studies, University of Toledo, 2014, Liberal Studies

The eugenics movement targeted people who were blind and visually impaired as part of "the unfit" members of society who needed to be prevented from passing on their blindness to successive generations. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, eugenicists, blindness professionals, and even other blind people believed that the best way to eliminate blindness was through the restriction of marriages between blind people. Ophthalmologist Lucien Howe repeatedly attempted to secure legislation barring blind people from marrying. Blindness professionals, especially educators, stressed the importance of the separation of the sexes in residential schools for the blind as the way in which to prevent blind marriages and intermarriages, and thus to prevent future generations of blind people. Blind people's assessment of their own marriageability was complex and sometimes contradictory. While some shirked contemporary views, most others accepted and promoted the eugenic idea that hereditary blindness should not be passed to the next generation. Many historians have previously overlooked the unique and rich history of blind people in the United States. This research hopes to illuminate an important aspect of that history.

Committee: Kim Nielsen (Committee Chair); Liat Ben-Moshe (Committee Member); Diane Britton (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Education History; Gender Studies; History; Personal Relationships; Special Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Theatre

Playwright George Bernard Shaw has a reputation as a humanitarian, an indefatigable seeker of justice and, in his own words, a “world betterer.” But this reputation is difficult to reconcile with his support for the totalitarian regimes and dictators that emerged after the First World War, which is not so well known. This enthusiasm is usually dismissed as an expression of Shaw's well known propensity for comic exaggeration and hyperbole, his pugnacious rhetoric, his love of paradox, and especially his addiction to antagonizing the British political establishment. However, as I believe this dissertation proves, Shaw's support was genuine, rooted in his powerful desire for absolute control over the unruly and chaotic, in a deep psychological longing for perfection. Shaw expressed rigid control over his own bodily instincts, and looked for political rulers of strong will and utopian designs to exercise similar control over unruly social elements. It is occasionally stated that Shaw's support for totalitarianism grew out of his frustration with nineteenth century liberalism, which ineffectually culminated in a disastrous world war. Yet close analysis to two of Shaw's Major Critical Essays from the 1890s shows that even then Shaw expressed a desire for a ruthless man of action unencumbered by the burden of conscience to come on the scene and establish a new world order, to initiate the utopian epoch. Indeed, a further analysis of a number of plays from before the war shows the impulse to be persistent and undeniable. This dissertation attempts to reveal the genuineness of Shaw's totalitarianism by looking at his plays and prefaces, articles, speeches and letters, but is especially concerned to analyze the utopian desire that runs through so many of Shaw's plays, looking at his political and eugenic utopianism as it is expressed in his drama and comparing it to his political totalitarianism. Shaw considered himself a “revolutionary writer,” and his activity as a sociali (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lesley Ferris PhD (Advisor); Richard Dutton PhD (Committee Member); Beth Kattelman PhD (Committee Member) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2008, English

This project examines discourses of hereditary “fitness” and their variations at three moments when they seep into public and political circulation: the rhetorics of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century eugenics, of the twentieth-century birth control movement, and of late-twentieth-century assisted reproductive technologies. More specifically, it studies the construction of the label “the Unfit” – a phrase present throughout scientific and eugenic literature of the early-twentieth century. Informed by the concept of “survival of the fittest” as popularized by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, hereditary “fitness” has been redeployed in scientific and public discussions of reproduction for sexist, racist, ableist, classist, and heteronormative ends. While the ability to produce offspring has always been intertwined with the notion of “survival of the fittest,” the misuse of these discourses, under the guise of science, results in discriminatory practices largely directed at women. By tracing its circulation at specific historical points, I reveal the social constructedness of hereditary “fitness” and complicate current beliefs about what it means to be “fit” for reproduction and/or parenthood.To establish the construction of hereditary “fitness” as a instrument of the eugenics movement, I examine several rhetorical formations within the discourses of science and eugenics – including definition, special topoi, kairos and audience, and figures of thought – to make visible the specific work each performs. In each chapter, I emphasize the ways these rhetorical formations participate in the production of women as fit objects and subjects for reproduction. Theoretical discussions of the power of language to shape, construct, and produce often stop short of showing the processes by and through which language works on a subject or object. Similarly, definitions of rhetorical elements can be abstract, often accompanied only by decontextualized quotes and excerpts f (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (Committee Chair); Katharine Ronald (Committee Member); Morris Young (Committee Member); Mary McDonald (Committee Member) Subjects: Rhetoric

BA, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

One of the most prominent themes portrayed in science fiction is dehumanization. As it pertains to the genre, dehumanization stands for the loss of one's basic humanity – individuality, emotion, and free will – as a result of harsh social control and/or overindulgence in high technology. One novel that offers a compelling depiction of this theme is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The novel depicts a world that has been united under a single government known as the World State. This regime has taken extensive measures to suppress the human element. Citizens are bred artificially, conditioned from birth to conform to the norms of society, and are kept docile through extensive leisure and frivolous entertainment. For those in power, the ultimate purpose of dehumanization is to maintain an unshakable control over the populace. The purpose of this thesis is to present four arguments regarding dehumanization in Brave New World: 1.) how the novel is meant to be a warning regarding mankind's technological/scientific prowess, 2.) how the main characters represent humanity, 3.) how the theme may have been influenced by contemporary norms, and 4.) how the theme of dehumanization, as presented in the novel, influenced the same theme in future science fiction literature.

Committee: Anthony Santirojprapai Prof. (Advisor); David Larwin Prof. (Committee Member); Sara Newman Prof. (Committee Member); Judith Wootten Prof. (Committee Member) Subjects: Genetics; Literature; Psychology; Sociology

PHD, Kent State University, 2011, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

Woodrow Wilson was a Christian anarchist who oftentimes used force and division as tools to help create transcendent national and global communities. This dissertation uses a combination of cultural and intellectual methodologies to crack Wilson's riddle by first disentangling his progressive ideology and then dissecting the way in which he applied it, at a fundamental level, to his foreign and domestic foreign policymaking. By paying close attention to the writings, speeches, and lessons from his academic career, the dissertation first lays out the unique progressive ideology that Wilson constructed, a sort of management framework for society that would point mankind toward a future of practicable anarchy where people would be guided by the spirit of altruism rather than the compulsion of institutional law. From there, the dissertation then analyzes the way in which Wilson used his progressive ideology as a filter through which to interpret and act upon the major issues confronting him while in office—war, revolution, race, gender, class, etc. Throughout, the dissertation makes clear that Wilson understood the mechanisms of the world as operating holistically, seeing all the issues of his day as interconnected—from the League of Nations and war with Germany to the sterilization of the “feeble-minded” and even the creation of Mother's Day. The organization of the dissertation, in turn, reflects Wilson's view by providing an integrated explanation of his thought and policies, illustrating the nuanced way that he treated social theory, theology, race, gender, class, and disability. Ultimately, it explains how he rearticulated the way that American power would work, leading him to various Latin American interventions, a recalibration of American Empire (including the Philippines and Native America), regional and global institutionalism, war with Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, interventions in newly Bolshevik Russia, and even early discussions with representatives from the E (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mary Ann Heiss (Advisor); Walter Hixson (Committee Member); Clarence Wunderlin, Jr. (Committee Member); Elizabeth Smith-Pryor (Committee Member); Richard Feinberg (Committee Member); Andrew Barnes (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Cultural Anthropology; History; International Relations

PHD, Kent State University, 2009, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

This dissertation examines the origins and course of development of the science of seroanthropology from its origins in World War I until the end of the Third Reich. Seroanthropology was a blend of two sciences—serology and anthropology—and sought to identify race through blood. It was perhaps most well-received by Germany's volkisch race scientists, or those who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race to all others. During Weimar and Nazi Germany, race theorists emphasized physiognomic characteristics in racial classification. As examiners' preferences varied, determining race was often a very subjective process. In the hope that blood would be a more efficient indicator of race than appearance, extensive efforts were made to realize a relationship between blood type and race. Some researchers came to affiliate blood type with race and a range of other characteristics. These tendencies were most conspicuous among researchers with a far-right political agenda, and I explore the ways in which their personal motivations were influenced by their professional activities. The scientific notion of “blood difference” was further exploited by race propagandists. Seroanthropology was attractive to a select group of far-right physicians who misappropriated blood science and medical fact for racist purposes, but there were also non-volkisch physicians of Jewish descent who made significant contributions to the study of blood and race. I examine the reasons for their involvement in a science that was misappropriated by anti-Semites. Jewish involvement in studies of race is more nuanced than has been claimed. This dissertation offers a revision of the recent biopolitics theory within modern German historiography which emphasizes the continuities between modern science and National Socialist racial policy. I question the notion that German studies of race and eugenics showed modernity's “most fatal potential.” My analysis demonstrate how seroanthropology does not fit neatly (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Steigmann-Gall PhD (Committee Chair); Shelley Baranowski PhD (Committee Member); Elizabeth Smith-Pryor PhD (Committee Member); David Kaplan PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2012, History

To date, studies of eugenics artificially confine their focus to the movement's application to race, socio-economic status, and the forced sterilization of the so-called feebleminded. However, the segregationist aspect of the eugenics design in the United States brought with it damaging policies toward individuals with physical and mental disabilities. The impact of the broad scale subscription to eugenic rhetoric and practice as applied to marginalized social groups was evident in all facets of society. It was, however, particularly revealing when one undertakes an analysis of the movement's application to the evolution of the special education system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Separation of disabled students, whether in the form of outright exclusion in the residential state schools, or segregation in isolated sight-saving classrooms in the common schools, was one of the strongest illustrations of negative eugenics. It implicated a classification and sorting system that utilized economic productivity as an assertedly objective measure of value and desirability. This scheme allowed for differentiation between the deserving and the undeserving in the extension of the full rights and benefits of U.S. citizenship during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The end of a desirable citizenry was achieved through the outright exclusion of students with disabilities, and later through segregated classrooms in the common schools following states' enactment of compulsory attendance statutes. Like other states, Ohio did not eliminate its exclusionary practices with its shift to segregated sight-saving classes. It shifted the form to intra-district segregation. Special education institutionalized the idea of the “undesirable” student. Segregated classrooms provided a vehicle to continue the tracking system that predetermined which students were likely to mature into valuable contributors to the expanding industrial state, and therefore desirable and (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Diane Britton (Committee Chair) Subjects: American History; Curricula; Education; Educational Psychology; Educational Sociology; Educational Theory; History; Law; Legal Studies; Psychological Tests; Psychology; Quantitative Psychology; Secondary Education