Eugenic Design

Description:

"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 a reinterpretation of one of America's most significant and popular design forms, ultimately grappling with the question of how ideology influences design."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Aerodynamics,  Civilization,  Design,  Eugenics,  Genetics,  History,  Industrial Design,  Race relations,  Racism,  Social aspects of Aerodynamics,  Social aspects of Design,  Social aspects of Eugenics,  Social aspects of Genetics,  Social aspects of Industrial design,  Social conditions,  Design, united states,  United states, civilization, 1918-1945,  United states, race relations,  United states, social conditions, 1865-1945,  United states, social conditions,  Social aspects

Places: United States

Times: 1918-1945,  1933-1945,  20th century