Eugenics and Classical Scholarship in Early 20th-Century America

FAIN: FT-259751-18

Denise Eileen McCoskey
Miami University (Oxford, OH 45056-1846)

Research and writing of a scholarly article about the role of eugenics in American classical scholarship prior to World War II.

In this project, I propose to carry out a critical study of the role of eugenic theories in early twentieth-century American classical scholarship. Building on research I conducted for an earlier project, my hypothesis is that the reliance on eugenics was widespread in classical scholarship during the first half of the twentieth century, and I would like to use the NEH Summer Stipend to document and evaluate classicists’ employment of such theories in their interpretations of ancient history, while also weighing the legacy such scholarship continues to have in the field of classics today. The penchant for using Greek and Roman history as a mirror for American life is as old as America itself, and I believe interrogation of the intersections of classical scholarship and eugenics can also provide insight into some of the ways contemporary American debates about race and eugenics were, in turn, bolstered by these interpretations of the ancient world.

Associated Products

"Basil Gildersleeve and John Scott: Race and the Rise of American Classical Philology" (Article)
Title: "Basil Gildersleeve and John Scott: Race and the Rise of American Classical Philology"
Author: Denise Eileen McCoskey
Abstract: In this paper, I expose some of the ways contemporary ideas about race permeated the rise of American classical philology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More specifically, I identify places where ideas about race, slavery, skin color, and “race suicide” surface in the writings of Basil Gildersleeve and John Scott, then show how those concepts can be traced to the rise of racial science in the United States—especially in the work of the American School of Ethnology and the eugenics movement—and its response to the American experiences of slavery, emancipation, and immigration.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/862237
Primary URL Description: Open access via Project Muse
Secondary URL: http://10.1353/ajp.2022.0007
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: American Journal of Philology
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Introduction (Book Section)
Title: Introduction
Author: Denise Eileen McCoskey
Editor: Denise Eileen McCoskey
Abstract: Editor's introduction to a volume that explores some of the specific ways race was defined and mobilized by different groups—including the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, and Ethiopians—as they came into contact with one another in the ancient world. Key to this inquiry is the examination of institutions, such as religion and politics, and forms of knowledge, such as science, that circumscribed the formation of ancient racial identities and helped determine their meanings and consequences. Drawing on a range of ancient evidence—literature, historical writing, documentary evidence, and ancient art and archaeology—this volume highlights both the complexity of ancient racial ideas and their support for the often violent and asymmetrical power structures embedded in racial representations and ancient practices like war and the enslavement of other persons. The study of race in antiquity has long been clouded by modern assumptions, so this volume also seeks to outline a better method for apprehending race on its own terms in the ancient world, including its relationship to other forms of identity, such as ethnicity and gender, while also seeking to identify and debunk some of the racist methods and biases that have been promulgated by classical historians themselves over the last few centuries.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://worldcat.org/title/1248599256
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Book Title: A Cultural History of Race in Antiquity
ISBN: 9781350067424

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