Unnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
By (author): "Daylanne K. English"
Publish Date:
2004
ISBN0807828688
ISBN139780807828687
AsinUnnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Original titleUnnatural Selections: Eugenics in American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Challenging conventional constructions of the Harlem Renaissance and American modernism, Daylanne English links writers from both movements to debates about eugenics in the Progressive Era. She argues that, in the 1920s, the form and content of writings by figures as disparate as W. E. B. Du Bois, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen were shaped by anxieties regarding immigration, migration, and intraracial breeding.