IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001567282

Marking Bodies: A History of Genetic Sex in the Twentieth Century (2011)

Canaday, Margot
Princeton University
Gordin, Michael D.
Canaday, Margot
Lindee, M. Susan
Creager, Angela N. H.
Gordin, Michael D.
Lindee, M. Susan

ISBN: 9781267010179

Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Advisor: Creager, Angela N.H; Committee Members: Gordin, Michael D., Canaday, Margot, Lindee, M. Susan.
Physical Details: 261 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Human genetics Sex differences Chromosomes Science and gender Sex hormones Feminism Homosexuality 20th century Barr, Murray Riddle, Oscar

This dissertation examines the history of genetic sex research between 1900 and 1960. During this period, geneticists offered a new account of sexual difference, asserting that chromosomes determined whether an individual became male or female. The project makes three central arguments. First, it demonstrates how geneticists constructed sexual difference as a "plastic dichotomy," a distinction that paradoxically suggested that the two sexes were discreet, and yet overlapping. Secondly, it illustrates how conceptions of genetic sex became more fixed or fluid as scientists, doctors, and social commentators struggled with one another to define a material, biological basis undergirding the difference of sex. For example, competing theories circulated about whether the chromosomes should serve as more reliable indicators of sex than hormones, gonads, or genitals. Finally, the project explores how descriptions of sexual difference intertwined with normative ideals about the proper roles that men and women should play in society. At a time when social concerns about sexual difference and sexuality ran high, biologist Oscar Riddle, journalist Amram Scheinfeld, and physician Murray Barr made the study of sex determination relevant to questions about feminism, eugenics, and the treatment of homo-, trans-, and intersexuality. By focusing on these three, lesser-known figures, the project tells a history of genetics from the margins in order to investigate the challenges that geneticists had to overcome in order to make a genetic account of sex compelling. Analyzing from the margins, we can gain a novel perspective for understanding how genetic proponents and critics continuously refashioned the significance of the chromosomes in relation to sex, ultimately making sex more fixed, and genetics more authoritative.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 73/02, Aug 2012. Proquest Document ID: 907104479.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567282/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Ha, Nathan Q.; (2011)
The Riddle of Sex: Biological Theories of Sexual Difference in the Early Twentieth-Century (/isis/citation/CBB001220951/)

Book Jordan-Young, Rebecca M.; (2010)
Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (/isis/citation/CBB001220966/)

Article Rouch, Hélène; (2006)
Die Geschlechterdifferenz bei Adrienne Sahuqué und Simone de Beauvoir. Ihre Lektüre biologischer und medizinischer Diskurse (/isis/citation/CBB001022229/)

Book Richardson, Sarah S.; (2013)
Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome (/isis/citation/CBB001213155/)

Book Rebecca M. Jordan-Young; Katrina Karkazis; (2019)
Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography (/isis/citation/CBB120687996/)

Article Hubbard, Thomas K.; (2008-9)
The Paradox of “Natural” Heterosexuality with “Unnatural” Women (/isis/citation/CBB001032469/)

Article Richardson, Sarah S.; (2012)
Sexing the X: How the X Became the “Female Chromosome” (/isis/citation/CBB001200847/)

Thesis Phillips, Jaime L.; (2001)
The Politics of Lesbian “Nature”: A Feminist Critique of Scientific Knowledge and Practice (/isis/citation/CBB001562446/)

Article Satzinger, Helga; (2012)
The Politics of Gender Concepts in Genetics and Hormone Research in Germany, 1900--1940 (/isis/citation/CBB001212646/)

Book Soraya de Chadarevian; (2020)
Heredity under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome (/isis/citation/CBB586763183/)

Article Hogan, Andrew J.; (2014)
The “Morbid Anatomy” of the Human Genome: Tracing the Observational and Representational Approaches of Postwar Genetics and Biomedicine The William Bynum Prize Essay (/isis/citation/CBB001422150/)

Book Randi Hutter Epstein; (2018)
Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything (/isis/citation/CBB966154025/)

Article Bangham, Jenny; Chadarevian, Soraya de; (2014)
Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage (/isis/citation/CBB001421065/)

Article Chadarevian, Soraya de; (2014)
Chromosome Surveys of Human Populations: Between Epidemiology and Anthropology (/isis/citation/CBB001421078/)

Article Rohden, Fabíola; (2008)
O império dos hormônios e a construção da diferença entre os sexos (/isis/citation/CBB000932926/)

Article Dietrich, Michael R.; (2000)
Of Moths and Men: Theo Lang and the Persistence of Richard Goldschmidt's Theory of Homosexuality, 1916-1960 (/isis/citation/CBB000770047/)

Thesis Chiang, Howard Hsueh-Hao; (2012)
Why Sex Mattered: Science and Visions of Transformation in Modern China (/isis/citation/CBB001562785/)

Book Pieter R. Adriaens; Andreas De Block; (2022)
Of Maybugs and Men: A History and Philosophy of the Sciences of Homosexuality (/isis/citation/CBB195332875/)

Thesis Eder, Sandra; (2011)
The Birth of Gender: Clinical Encounters with Hermaphroditic Children at Johns Hopkins (1940--1956) (/isis/citation/CBB001567298/)

Thesis Mussey, Ann Louise; (2001)
Lesbian Subjectivity and the Sciences of Sexuality, 1920--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB001562416/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}