Reproduction by Design

Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain

By: Angus McLaren

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Hardcover | 9 March 2012 | Edition Number 1

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Hardcover
248 Pages

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23.83 x 16.76 x 2.2

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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.

Industry Reviews

"I know of no other work on interwar Britain, or even twentieth-century Britain, that brings together modernity, sexuality, technology, and the environment in quite this way. The result is extremely compelling and successful. It is certain to attract a great deal of interest from both scholars and a wider audience." (Stephen Brooke, York University)"

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Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Speculative Literature and Mechanistic Progress
"The standardized world we are facing and fearing": Sex and Futurist Fictions	p. 9
"What is better, a car or a wife?": Automobiles and Modern Bodies	p. 37
"A race of human machines": Robots and Reproduction	p. 57
Beyond the Predictive: Sex in Real Time
"A sort of animal or mechanic immortality": Glands and Eugenics	p. 81
"A spinster and a syringe": Debating Test-Tube Babies	p. 109
Romantic Racialism
"Breeding a race apart from nature": Ruralists and Conservationists	p. 137
Conclusion	p. 157
Notes	p. 165
Index	p. 227
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction by Design

Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies in Interwar Britain

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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