History of Medicine #22: Send in the Clones? Naomi Mitchison (née Haldane)’s Musing on Reproduction, Breeding, Feminism, Socialism and Eugenics from the 1920s to the 1970s
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Description
In this seminar Lesley Hall investigates the relationship between feminism and eugenics through the fascinating lens of Naomi Mitchison’s fiction. JBS Haldane’s sister, and very much situated at the centre of the eugenic and literary movements of her time, Naomi Mitchison was a prolific author writing path braking historical fiction amongst other works before turning to Science Fiction. Scrutinizing her personal and political lives, this seminar focuses on three of Mitchison’s postwar works in relation to perceptions of breeding and reproduction, namely Memoirs of a Spacewomen (1962), Solution 3 (1975), and Not by Bread Alone (1983). This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 13 November 2012.
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