McLaren, Angus (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Physical Details: viii + 235 pp.
Language: English
Modernity in interwar Europe frequently took the form of a preoccupation with mechanizing the natural; fears and fantasies revolved around the notion that the boundaries between people and machines were collapsing. Reproduction in particular became a battleground for those debating the merits of the modern world. That debate continues today, and to understand the history of our anxieties about modernity, we can have no better guide than Angus McLaren. In Reproduction by Design, McLaren draws on novels, plays, science fiction, and films of the 1920s and '30s, as well as the work of biologists, psychiatrists, and sexologists, to reveal surprisingly early debates on many of the same questions that shape the conversation today: homosexuality, recreational sex, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, sex change operations, and in vitro fertilization. Here, McLaren brings together the experience and perception of modernity with sexuality, technology, and ecological concerns into a cogent discussion of science's place in reproduction in British and American cultural history.
...MoreDescription Draws on literature, film, and scientific work regarding homosexuality, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, sex change, and in vitro fertilization.
Review Mark A. Largent (2018) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 209-210).
Review Catherine Jenkins (2016) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine (pp. 433-435).
Review Mazumdar, Pauline M. H. (2012) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". Canadian Journal of History (pp. 655-656).
Review Szreter, Simon (2013) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". American Historical Review (pp. 588-589).
Review Bigman, Fran (2014) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". Journal of Social History (pp. 812-813).
Review Davis, Gayle (2014) Review of "Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain". Medical History (pp. 300-301).
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