Mar 28, 2024  
2021-2022 UMass Dartmouth Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2021-2022 UMass Dartmouth Undergraduate Catalog [Archived Catalog]

HST 367 - Race, Eugenics, and Genetics in U.S. History

Credits 3
Lecture
Requirements: Prerequisite: Course not open to Freshmen
Explores early twentieth-century social reformers’ efforts to improve American society by influencing human traits and behavior. Based on reformers’ ideas of desirable and undesirable human traits, proponents of eugenics sought to encourage reproduction among particular groups of people while discouraging others through such means as the promotion of birth control, immigration restriction, involuntary sterilization, and institutionalization of the “unfit”. Course examines racial, ethnic, and class biases as they intersected with ideas of biological determinism fueling the eugenics movement.
Graded