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Eugenic design : streamlining America in the 1930s / Christina Cogdell.
Van Pelt Library HQ755.5.U5 C64 2004
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Cogdell, Christina.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Eugenics--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Eugenics.
- Design--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Design.
- Aerodynamics--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Aerodynamics.
- Industrial design--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Industrial design.
- Genetics--Social aspects--United States--History--20th century.
- Genetics.
- Genetics--Social aspects.
- History.
- Industrial design--Social aspects.
- Social aspects.
- Design--Social aspects.
- Eugenics--Social aspects.
- United States--Civilization--1918-1945.
- United States.
- Civilization.
- United States--Race relations.
- Race relations.
- Racism--United States--History--20th century.
- Racism.
- United States--Social conditions--1933-1945.
- Social conditions.
- Physical Description:
- xvii, 328 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2004]
- Summary:
- In 1939, Vogue magazine invited commercial designer Raymond Loewy and eight of his contemporaries-including Walter Dorwin Teague, Egmont Arens, and Henry Dreyfuss-to design a dress for the "Woman of the Future" as part of its special issue promoting the New York World's Fair and its theme, "The World of Tomorrow." While focusing primarily on her clothing and accessories, many commented as well on the future woman's physique, predicting that her body and mind would be perfected through the implementation of eugenics. Industrial designers' fascination with eugenics-especially that of Norman Bel Geddes-began during the previous decade, and its principles permeated their theories of the modern design style known as "streamlining."
- In Eugenic Design, Christina Cogdell charts new territory in the history of industrial design, popular science, and American culture in the 1930s by uncovering the links between streamline design and eugenics, the pseudoscientific belief that the best human traits could-and should-be cultivated through selective breeding. Streamline designers approached products the same way eugenicists approached bodies. Both considered themselves to be reformers advancing evolutionary progress through increased efficiency, hygiene, and the creation of a utopian "ideal type." Cogdell reconsiders the popular streamline style in U.S. industrial design and proposes that in theory, rhetoric, and context the style served as a material embodiment of eugenic ideology. With careful analysis and abundant illustrations, Eugenic Design is an ambitious reinterpretation of one of America's most significant and popular design forms, ultimately grappling with the question of how ideology influences deisgn.
- Contents:
- 1 Introduction: Controlling Evolution 1
- 2 Products or Bodies? Streamline Design and Eugenics as Applied Biology 33
- 3 Progenitors of the Future: Popularizing Streamlining and Eugenics During the 1930s 84
- 4 "Flow Is the Word": Biological Efficiency and Streamline Design 128
- 5 Race Hygiene, Product Hygiene: Curing Disease Through Sterilization 157
- 6 Future Perfect? The Elusive "Ideal Type" 190
- 7 Conclusion: Pseudoscience? Pseudostyle? 217.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [305]-312) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0812238249
- OCLC:
- 55067595
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