Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780-1940

by Gregory D. Smithers

Overview

Science, Sexuality, and Race in the United States and Australia, 1780–1940, Revised Edition is a sociohistorical tour de force that examines the entwined formation of racial theory and sexual constructs within settler colonialism in the United States and Australia from the Age of Revolution to the Great Depression. Gregory D. Smithers historicizes the dissemination and application of scientific and social-scientific ideas within the process of nation building in two countries with large Indigenous populations and shows how intellectual constructs of race and sexuality were mobilized to subdue Aboriginal peoples.



Building on the comparative settler-colonial and imperial histories that appeared after the book’s original publication, this completely revised edition includes two new chapters. In this singular contribution to the study of transnational and comparative settler colonialism, Smithers expands on recent scholarship to illuminate both the subject of the scientific study of race and sexuality and the national and interrelated histories of the United States and Australia.

Gregory D. Smithers is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of several books, including The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity, and is the coeditor of Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas (Nebraska, 2014).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803295919
Publisher:	Nebraska
Publication date:	07/01/2017
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	516
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Gregory D. Smithers is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of several books, including The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity, and is the coeditor of Native Diasporas: Indigenous Identities and Settler Colonialism in the Americas (Nebraska, 2014). 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

A Note about Terminology

Introduction

Part I

1. On the Importance of Good Breeding

2. Debating Race and the Meaning of Whiteness

3. Eliminating the "Dubious Hyphen between Savagery and Civilization”

4. Racial Discourse in the United States and Australia

Part II

5. Missionaries, Settlers, Cherokees, and African Americans, 1780s–1850s

6. Missionaries, Settlers, and Australian Aborigines, 1780s–1850s

7. The Evolution of an American Race, 1860s–1890s

8. The Evolution of White Australia, 1860–1890

Part III

9. The “Science” of Human Breeding

10. “Breeding out the Colour”

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

A shining example of how to do comparative and transnational history.”—American Historical Review
 

Katherine Ellinghaus

A keen critique of the impossible logic of racism in two major settler societies anxious to strengthen their sense of nationhood. . . . Readers will be fully convinced of the key importance of whiteness in both these societies, and of the science that bolstered it.”—Philippa Levine, author of The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset
 

Philippa Levine

[Gregory D. Smithers] combines a very ambitious synthesis of existing scholarship with original research into primary sources. This book could have a profound impact upon scholarly thinking in relevant fields.”—Ann McGrath, author of Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia
 

Ann McGrath