| GA-254210-17 | Public Programs: Cooperative Agreements and Special Projects (Public Programs) | WGBH Educational Foundation | American Experience: Documentary Films on Science | 12/1/2016 - 12/31/2019 | $800,000.00 | Mark | | Samels | | | | WGBH Educational Foundation | Boston | MA | 02135-2016 | USA | 2016 | | Cooperative Agreements and Special Projects (Public Programs) | Public Programs | 800000 | 0 | 800000 | 0 | Production
of two hour-long films for the American
Experience that examine the topic of science, society, and motherhood.
This is a proposal for a cooperative agreement between American
Experience, public television's preeminent history series, and the National Endowment
for the Humanities for the production of two one-hour film projects. The films in
this proposal directly respond to the NEH's call for projects that examine connections
between the sciences and the humanities.
The first film in this proposal, The Mother of Tomorrow, tells
the story of the involuntary eugenic sterilization of twenty-year-old Ann Cooper
Hewitt. The ensuing 1936 trial in California, in which Ann took her mother and two
doctors to court, brought eugenics and motherhood to the center of popular
debate across the country. The sensational trial is a lens on the much wider eugenics
movement and its long history in the United States. The second film, The Science of Love, chronicles
Professor Harry Harlow's forty-year research career in experimental psychology and
also illuminates the history and science of motherhood in the mid-twentieth century.
In the 1950s, Harlow developed an experiment with infant monkeys that helped reshape
how Americans viewed parenting and how they thought about human, as well as
monkey, mothers. Harlow's research provides a revealing reflection of shifting beliefs
about the role of women in American homes and families.
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