Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain

By: Angus Mclaren

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: 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.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9780226560694
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
Date of Addition:: 11/09/15
Copyrighted By:: University of Chicago Press
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Nonfiction, Science, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts, Medicine, Sociology
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.