Douglas C. Baynton's Books

Defectives in the Land

Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics

By: Douglas C. Baynton

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Defectives in the Land

Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics

By: Douglas C. Baynton

“Baynton argues that screening out disability emerged as the primary objective of U.S. immigration policy during the late 19th and early 20th century.” —Journal of Social History Immigration history has largely focused on the restriction of immigrants by race and ethnicity, overlooking disability as a crucial factor in the crafting of the image of the “undesirable immigrant.” Defectives in the Land, Douglas C. Baynton’s groundbreaking new look at immigration and disability, aims to change this. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baynton explains, immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities—known as “defectives”—out of the country. The list of those included is long: the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility impaired; people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs; those unusually short or tall; people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities; intersexuals; men of “poor physique” and men diagnosed with “feminism.” Not only were disabled individuals excluded, but particular races and nationalities were also identified as undesirable based on their supposed susceptibility to mental, moral, and physical defects. In this transformative book, Baynton argues that early immigration laws were a cohesive whole—a decades-long effort to find an effective method of excluding people considered to be defective. This effort was one aspect of a national culture that was increasingly fixated on competition and efficiency, anxious about physical appearance and difference, and haunted by a fear of hereditary defect and the degeneration of the American race.

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Page Count

186

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022636433X

ISBN 13

9780226364339

Forbidden Signs

American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language

By: Douglas C. Baynton

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Forbidden Signs

American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language

By: Douglas C. Baynton

Forbidden Signs explores American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to 1920 through the lens of one striking episode: the campaign led by Alexander Graham Bell and other prominent Americans to suppress the use of sign language among deaf people. The ensuing debate over sign language invoked such fundamental questions as what distinguished Americans from non-Americans, civilized people from "savages," humans from animals, men from women, the natural from the unnatural, and the normal from the abnormal. An advocate of the return to sign language, Baynton found that although the grounds of the debate have shifted, educators still base decisions on many of the same metaphors and images that led to the misguided efforts to eradicate sign language. "Baynton's brilliant and detailed history, Forbidden Signs, reminds us that debates over the use of dialects or languages are really the linguistic tip of a mostly submerged argument about power, social control, nationalism, who has the right to speak and who has the right to control modes of speech."—Lennard J. Davis, The Nation "Forbidden Signs is replete with good things."—Hugh Kenner, New York Times Book Review

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Page Count

253

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226039684

ISBN 13

9780226039688

Defectives in the Land

Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics

By: Douglas C. Baynton

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Defectives in the Land

Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics

By: Douglas C. Baynton

Defective. Handicapped. Ugly. Dependent. These words are Douglas Baynton s chapter titles, labels that were used to describe disabled immigrants during the period of American history when a series of laws were put in place to restrict immigration from less desirable nations (from Southern and Eastern Europe, 1882 to 1920s). Baynton s history details the ways in which a great variety of disabled immigrants were turned back during these years, among them the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility-impaired, also people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs, also those who had intellectual or psychiatric disability, even men diagnosed with poor physique or feminism (underdeveloped sex organs). The labels and defects are named in immigration policies and procedures; Baynton insists, quite reasonably, that immigration law offers the clearest revelation of the era s cultural assumptions about disability. One of his findings is that disability, even more than race (which is usually highlighted in immigration histories), was the main concern of immigration restrictionists. Over time, the idea that disabled people were dependent, and thus a burden, got amplified and became a social issue, not confined to family or local community. Meanwhile, the stigma of visible defects grew in intensity, along with the fear of traits that could not be seen (germ theory, defective germ plasm, infectious diseases). Polluted heredity flowing into the future was an ever-present fear. Until now, with Defectives in the Land, the issue of discrimination against people with disabilities in immigration law has gone unrecognized and unexamined.

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186

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022636416X

ISBN 13

9780226364162

Forbidden Signs

American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language

By: Douglas C. Baynton

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Forbidden Signs

American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language

By: Douglas C. Baynton

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253

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226039641

ISBN 13

9780226039640

JOURNALS & REMINISCENCES OF JA

By: James 1800-1886 Douglas

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JOURNALS & REMINISCENCES OF JA

By: James 1800-1886 Douglas

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

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Page Count

272

Publisher

Wentworth Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

137390724X

ISBN 13

9781373907240

Book's by Douglas C. Baynton

Defectives in the Land

Defectives in the Land

Forbidden Signs

Forbidden Signs

Defectives in the Land

Defectives in the Land

Forbidden Signs

Forbidden Signs

JOURNALS & REMINISCENCES OF JA

JOURNALS & REMINISCENCES OF JA

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