Query From Kim Nielsen nielsen@macalester.edu 27 Nov 1996
I have a student interested in doing a paper on the history of forced sterilization in the United States. Does anyone have any reference ideas? Solinger's _Wake Up, Little Suzy_ has been the most helpful thus far. Thanks much.
Responses:
Amott, Teresa & Julie Matthaei _Race, Gender and Work_(South End Press)
Barker-Benfield, G.J. _Horror of the Half-Known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America_(Harper & Row, NY, 1976) See esp. chapters on The Rise of Gynecology, Architect of the Vagina, and Sexual Surgery
Bauza, Vanessa "Puerto Rico: The Covert campaign to Sterilize Women", _MS._, 5 (1994)
Bishop, Mary "Sterilization Survivors Speak Out", _Southern Exposure_ 23:2 (summer 1995) : 12-17
Bock, Gisela "Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood, Compulsory Sterilization, and the State", in _When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany_, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman, and Marion Kaplan (NY, Monthly Review Press, 1984)pp.271-96
Carpio, Myla F. Thyrza "Lost Generations: The Involuntary Sterilization of American Indian Women" (Master's thesis, Arizona State U., 1995)
Davis, Angela Y. _Women, Race, and Class_ (NY, Vintage Press, 1981)
Dreifus, Claudia "Sterilizing the Poor", in _Seizing Our Bodies: The Politics of Women's Health_(NY, Vintage Books, 1977).
Gould, Stephen Jay _The Mismeasure of Man_; also "Carrie Buck's Daughter" in _Natural History_, July 1984: 1-18
Henderson, Peta Murray "Population policy, social structure and the health system in Puerto Rico: The case of female sterilization" (Ph.D. dissertation, U. of Connecticut, 1976)
Kevles, Daniel _In the Name of Eugenics_
Larson, Edward J. _Sex, Race and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South_
Laughlin, Harry H. _Eugenical Sterilization in the United States_(Chicago?, Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago(?))
Lombardo, Paul _Eugenic Sterilization in Virginia_(1982)
Lugo-Ortiz, Maria de Lourdes "Sterilization, Birth Control and Populacion Control: The News Coverage of _El Mundo_, _El Imarcial_, and _Claridad_," (Ph.D. Dissertation, U of Wisconsin, 1994).
McLaren, Angus "The Creation of a Haven for ' Human Thoroughbreds ' : The Sterilization of the Feeble-Minded and the Mentally Ill in British Columbia," _Canadian Historical Review_, 1986.
Pickens, Donald K. "The Sterilization Movement: The Search for Purity in Mind and State", _Phylon_28 (Spring 1967):78-94.
Reilly, Philip R. _The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States_(Baltimore, John Hopkins U Press, 1991).
Rodrigues-Triaz, Helen "Sterilization Abuse," in _Biological Woman-The Convenient Myth_.
Schoen, Johanna "A Great Thing for Poor Folks: Birth Control, Sterilization and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare in the 20th Century", (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1996)
Shapiro, Thomas _Population Control Politics: Women, Sterilization, and Reproductive Choice_(Philadelphia, Temple U Press, 1985).
Smith, J. David _The Sterilization of Carrie Buck_(1989)
Trombley, Stephen _The Right to Reproduce_
Vecoli, Rudolph J. "Sterilization: A Progressive Measure?", _Wisconsin Magazine of History_ 43 (Spring 1960): 190-202.
Other Suggestions:
check Black Panther Newspaper for articles
_Twice a Minority: Mexican-American Women_, n.a.
check court records on Buck v. Bell-the Virginia case from 1920s that allowed unconsenting sterilization of women in state institutions
There's an excellent documentary on forced sterilization in Lynchburg, VA...called "The Lynchburg Story" (BBC Production)
Contact: Mary Bishop _Roanoke Times_[Roanoke, Virginia] (above film based in part on her research, she is also writing a book)
Another excellent documentary: "La Operaci-Fin" (Latin American Film Project and Skylight Pictures and Cinema Guild, 1985??)
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