A disturbing but ultimately discredited strain in American thought, eugenics was a crucial ideological force in the early twentieth century. Luczak investigates the work of writers like Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, to consider the impact of eugenic racial discourse on American literary production from 1900-1940.

Ewa Barbara Luczak is Associate Professor of American Literature at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of How Their Living Outside America Affected Five African American Authors: Toward a Theory of Expatriate Literature.

Introduction 1. "A Truly Angelic Society": Eugenic Humanity Without Humans 2. "Practical-Headed Judgment Of A Stock-Breeder": Sexual Selection In The Early Fiction Of Jack London 3. "Vast And Malodorous Sea": Racial Degeneration In Jack London's The People Of The Abyss And The Scarlet Plague 4. Eugenic Strands In The Gynaecocentric Criticism Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 5. "Endowment Of Motherhood": Gilman's Utopian Fiction 6. "At Best Race Is A Superstition": George S. Schuyler's Journalistic Battles With Racial Absolutism 7. Between "Chromatic Emancipation" And A Fascist State: Schuyler's Black No More And Black Empire Conclusions: Before We Move Forward