Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination

Ewa Barbara Luczak is Associate Professor of American Literature at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of How Their Living Outside America Affected Five African American Authors: Toward a Theory of Expatriate Literature.

"Luczak offers a broad cultural history of eugenic thinking while at the same time providing remarkably fresh and compelling interpretations of three important writers. Through her extensive acquaintance with the science, social theories, laws, and literature associated with eugenics, Luczak shows a masterly command of the arguments made on behalf of theories we may now dismiss as marginal or retrograde when in fact they once occupied a position of privilege and surprising authority in early twentieth-century American thought." - Eric J. Sundquist, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University, USA "A penetrating interpretation of the reach of eugenics in the early twentieth-century American literary imagination. Luczak's sharp analysis elucidates the pervasive and textured presence of themes and metaphors of breeding, degeneration, and perfection in the oeuvres of three prolific authors known for their poignant ruminations on gender, race, and westward expansion. This book complicates our understanding of eugenics as a literary and political force at the heart of American modernism." - Alexandra Stern, Professor of American Culture, University of Michigan, USA "Grounded in extraordinary archival research and informed by both theoretical sophistication and sensitivity to textual nuance, this pathbreaking and revelatory book will be required reading for historians and literary scholars alike. Luczak's decision to center her compelling study on Jack London, Kate Chopin, and George Schuyler proves absolutely inspired as she not only challenges conventional wisdom regarding their work but also uses her trenchant analysis to mount a wide-ranging, energetic, boldly provocative, and unflinching engagement with the troublingly pervasive impact of eugenics thought in American culture." - Richard Yarborough, Professor of English & African American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

• Introduction 1. "A Truly Angelic Society": Eugenic Humanity Without Humans 2. "Practical-Headed Judgment Of A Stock-Breeder": Sexual Selection In The Early Fiction Of Jack London 3. "Vast And Malodorous Sea": Racial Degeneration In Jack London's The People Of The Abyss And The Scarlet Plague 4. Eugenic Strands In The Gynaecocentric Criticism Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 5. "Endowment Of Motherhood": Gilman's Utopian Fiction 6. "At Best Race Is A Superstition": George S. Schuyler's Journalistic Battles With Racial Absolutism 7. Between "Chromatic Emancipation" And A Fascist State: Schuyler's Black No More And Black Empire Conclusions: Before We Move Forward