Resources.

Resources for educators, researchers, and further reading.

Digital Resources

Screenshot of the Sonoma State Hospital Narrative and Visual History Site. Links out to the external site.
Sonoma State Hospital Narrative and Visual History. Justin Joque, Kayla Kingston, Nicole Novak, Alexandra Minna Stern, Kate O'Connor, and Jacqueline Wernimont.

​Eugenic Rubicon: California's Sterilization Stories. Jacqueline Wernimont and Alexandra Minna Stern.

"The Movement that Inspired the Holocaust," TEDx Animation

Trace the history of the eugenics movement in the US, and discover how the belief in ideal genetics led to forced sterilizations.

Since ancient Greece, humans have controlled populations via reproduction, retaining some traits and removing others. But in the 19th century, a new scientific movement dedicated to this endeavor emerged: eugenics. Scientists believed they could improve society by ensuring that only desirable traits were passed down. Alexandra Minna Stern and Natalie Lira detail the history of eugenics in the US.

Lesson by Alexandra Minna Stern and Natalie Lira, directed by Héloïse Dorsan-Rachet.​

Further Reading

The following list is not exhaustive, but it does provide some resources and further reading for context, research, and general information.

Are there any articles or related scholarship we should know about? You can submit your suggestions via our Google Form here.
Survivor Perspectives and Stories
  1. Articles
    1. Amanda Morris, “‘You Just Feel Like Nothing’: California to Pay Sterilization Victims,” New York Times, 7 November 2021.
  2. Documentaries
    1. Erika Cohn, dir., Belly of the Beast, 2017, https://youtu.be/IoD7VgFl9EI.
    2. Jessica L. Pic and Sana A. Haq, dirs., Wicked Silence: The North Carolina Forced Sterilization Program and Bioethics, Wake Forest University, 2014, https://youtu.be/hstkagJJDfg.
    3. Renee Tajima-Peña, dir., No Más Bebés, PBS, 2016.
    4. Lorena Tucker, dir., Amá, Dartmouth Films, 2018, https://vimeo.com/303690446.
  3. Monographs
    1. Robert B. Edgerton, The Cloak of Competence, rev. ed. (University of California Press, 1993).
    2. Natalie Lira, Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900–1950s (University of California Press, 2021).
    3. Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 2015).
    4. Brianna Theobald, Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
  4. Podcasts
    1. Adam Rutherford, Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics, BBC, 2022.
Archival and Research Methods
  1. George C. Alter, Myron P. Gutmann, Susan Hautaniemi Leonard, and Emily R. Merchant. “Longitudinal Analysis of Historical-Demographic Data.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52, no. 4 (Spring 2012): 503–517.
  2. Michelle Caswell. “Defining Human Rights Archives: Introduction to the Special Double Issue on Archives and Human Rights.” Archival Science 14 (2014): 207–213.
  3. Michelle Caswell. “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse: Lessons from Community Archives.” Archival Science 14 (2014): 307–322.
  4. J.T.H. Connor. “The ‘Human Subject,’ ‘Vulnerable Populations,’ and Medical History: The Problem of Presentism and Discourse of Bioethics.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (2017).
  5. Hariz Halilovich. “Reclaiming Erased Lives: Archives, Records, and Memories in Post-War Bosnia and the Bosnian Diaspora.” Archival Science 14 (2014): 231–247.
  6. Derek L. Hansen, Patrick Schone, Douglas Corey, Matthew Reid, and Jake Gehring. “Quality Control Mechanisms for Crowdsourcing: Peer Review, Arbitration, and Expertise at FamilySearch Indexing.” Computer Supported Cooperative Work (2013).
  7. Derek Hansen, Jake Gehring, Patrick Schone, and Matthew Reid. “Improving Indexing Efficiency and Quality: Comparing A-B-Arbitrate and Peer Review.” (2013).
  8. David Kaye. “Archiving Justice: Conceptualizing the Archives of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” Archival Science 14 (2014): 381–396.
  9. Vani Natarajan and Hannah Mermelstein. “Knowledge, Access, and Resistance: A Conversation on Librarians and Archivists to Palestine.” in Melissa Morrone, ed., Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond. Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2014. 274–258.
  10. Geoffrey Robinson. “Break the Rules, Save the Records: Human Rights Archives and the Search for Justice in East Timor.” Archival Science 14 (2014): 323–343.
  11. Amanda Strauss. “Treading the Ground of Contested Memory: Archivists and the Human Rights Movement in Chile.” Archival Science 15 (2015): 369–397.
  12. Katherine M. Wisser and Joel A. Blanco-Rivera. “Surveillance, Documentation, and Privacy: An International Comparative Analysis of State Intelligence Records.” Archival Science 16 (2016): 125–147.
 
History of Eugenics (General)
  1. Morton Birnbaum. “Eugenic Sterilization: A Discussion of Certain Legal, Medical, and Moral Aspects of Present Practices in our Public Mental Institutions.” Journal of American Medical Association 175, no. 2 (1961): 951–958.
  2. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky. “Reproduction, Ethics, and Public Policy: The Federal Sterilization Regulations.” The Hastings Center Report 9, no. 5 (October 1979): 29–41.
  3. Adam Rutherford, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics (Norton, 2023).
  4. Linda Villarosa. “The Long Shadow of Eugenics in America.” New York Times Magazine. 8 June 2022.
Carceral States and Sterilization
  1. Laura I. Appleman. “Deviancy, Dependency, and Disability: The Forgotten History of Eugenics and Mass Incarceration.” Duke Law Journal 68, no. 3 (December 2018).
  2. John P. Radford. “Sterilization Versus Segregation: Control of the ‘Feebleminded’, 1900–1938.” Social Science Medicine 33, no. 4 (1991): 449–458.
  3. Darrell Steffensmeier and Stephen Demuth. “Does Gender Modify the Effects of Race-Ethnicity on Criminal Sanctioning? Sentences for Male and Female White, Black, and Hispanic Defendants.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 22 (2006): 241–261.
  4. Carolyn B. Sufrin, Jacqueline P. Tulsky, Joseph Goldenson, Kelly S. Winter, and Deborah L. Cohan. “Emergency Contraception for Newly Arrested Women: Evidence for an Unrecognized Public Health Opportunity.” Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 87, no. 2 (2009).
  5. Della J. Winters and Adria Ryan McLaughlin. “Soft Sterilization: Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives in the Carceral State.” Journal of Women and Social Work 35, no. 2 (2020): 218–230.
 
Disability and Reproductive Autonomy
  1. Jeffrey P. Baker and Birgit Lang. “Eugenics and the Origins of Autism.” Pediatrics 104, no. 2 (August 2017).
  2. Molly Ladd-Taylor. “Contraception or Eugenics? Sterilization and 'Mental Retardation' in the 1970s and 1980s.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 31, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 189–211.
  3. Jamelia N. Morgan. “Policing Under Disability Law.” Stanford Law Review 73, no. 6 (June 2021).
  4. Julia A. Rivera Drew. “Hysterectomy and Disability among U.S. Women.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 45, no. 2 (2013): 147–163.
 
Genetics, Race, and Eugenics
  1. Emily Klancher Merchant, Lisa Dive, and Osagie Obasogie (Moderator). “Ensuring Equitable Use of New Genetic Technologies: Lessons from Eugenics.” ELSIhub. 14 January 2022.
  2. Natalie Lira, Nicole Novak, Elyse Thulin, and Alexandra Minna Stern. “Studying America’s Eugenics Era through an ELSI Lens: Data, Context, and Relevance.” ELSIhub. June 2020.
  3. Jo C. Phelan, Bruce G. Link, and Narumi M. Feldman. “The Genomic Revolution and Beliefs about Essential Racial Differences: A Backdoor to Eugenics?” American Sociological Review 78, No. 2 (1 April 2013): 167–191.
  4. Susan M. Reverby. “Invoking ‘Tuskegee’: Problems in Health Disparities, Genetic Assumptions, and History.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Undeserved 21, no. 3 (August 2010 Supplement): 26–34.
  5. Sarah Zhang. “Will the Alt-Right Promote a New Kind of Racist Genetics?” The Atlantic. 29 December 2016.
 
Institutional Histories
  1. Marilyn Brookwood. The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children’s Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 2021).
  2. Karin Lorene Zipf, Bad Girls at Samarcand: Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory (LSU Press, 2016).
 
Immigration and Eugenics
  1. Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940. 2nd ed. University of Washington Press, 2014.
  2. Natalia Molina. “Fear and Loathing in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: The History of Mexicans as Medical Menaces, 1848 to the Present.” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 41, no. 2 (Fall 2016).
 
Racial and Ethnic Disparities of Eugenics and Reproductive Care
  1. Barbara Gurr. “Mothering in the Borderlands: Policing Native American Women’s Reproductive Healthcare.” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 37, no. 1 (Spring 2011).
  2. Josephine Jacobs and Maria Stanfors. “Racial and Ethnic Differences in U.S. Women’s Choice of Reversible Contraceptives, 1955–2010.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 45, no. 3 (2013): 139–147.
  3. Natalie Lira. ““Of Low Grade Mexican Parentage’: Race, Gender and Eugenic Sterilization in California, 1928–1952. Ph.D. diss. University of Michigan. 2015.
  4. Natalie Lira and Alexandra Minna Stern. “Mexican Americans and Eugenic Sterilization: Resisting Reproductive Injustice in California, 1920–1950.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 9–34.
  5. Dorothy E. Roberts. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.
  6. Corinne H. Rocca and Cynthia C. Harper. “Do Racial and Ethnic Differences in Contraceptive Attitudes and Knowledge Explain Disparities in Method Use?” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 44, no. 3 (2012): 150–158.
  7. Gregory W. Rutecki. “Forced Sterilization of Native Americans: Later Twentieth Century Physician Cooperation with National Eugenic Policies?” Ethics and Medicine 27, no. 1 (Spring 2011).
  8. Grace Shih, Eric Vittinghoff, Jody Steinauer, and Christine Dehlendorf. “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Contraceptive Method Choice in California.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 43, no. 3 (2011): 173–180.
  9. Karina M. Shreffler, Julia McQuillan, Arthur L. Greil, and David R. Johnson. “Surgical Sterilization, Regret, and Race: Contemporary Patterns.” Social Science Research Journal 50 (March 2015): 31–45.
  10. Thomas W. Volscho. “Racism and Disparities in Women’s Use of the Depo-Provera Injection in the Contemporary USA.” Critical Sociology 37, no. 5 (2011): 673–688.

State Policy, Reparations, and Eugenics
  1. Elizabeth Catte. Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia. Belt Publishing. 2021.
  2. Carolyn Said, “‘There’s no amount of money that can take away how I felt’: California Pays Reparations to Survivors of State-Sanctioned Sterilizations,” San Francisco Chronicle, 11 February 2022.
  3. Johanna Schoen. “Between Choice and Coercion: Women and the Politics of Sterilization in North Carolina, 1929–1975.” Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 132–156.
  4. Alexandra Minna Stern, Nicole L. Novak, Natalie Lira, Kate O'Connor, Siobán Harlow, and Sharon Kardia. “California's Sterilization Survivors: An Estimate and Call for Redress.” American Journal of Public Health 107, No. 1 (January 2017): 50–54.
  5. Amy Vogel. “Regulating Degeneracy: Eugenic Sterilization in Iowa, 1911–1977.” The Annals of Iowa 54 (Winter 1995).
  6. Alex Wellerstein. “States of Eugenics: Institutions and Practices of Compulsory Sterilization in California.” in Sheila Jasanoff, ed., Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011, 29–58.
 
Sterilization, Welfare, and Reproductive Control
  1. Molly Ladd-Taylor. "Saving Babies and Sterilizing Mothers: Eugenics and Welfare Politics in the Interwar United States." Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 4, no. 1. Spring 1997. 136–153.
  2. Gregory N. Price and William Darity. “The Economics of Race and Eugenic Sterilization in North Carolina: 1958–1968.” Economics and Human Biology 8 (2010): 261–272.
  3. Sabrina Tavernise. “Medicaid Finds Opportune Time to Offer Birth Control: Right after Birth.” New York Times. 28 October 2016.
  4. Justine P. Wu, Michael M. McKee, Kimberly S. Mckee, Michelle A. Meade, Melissa Plegue, and Ananda Sen. “Female Sterilization is More Common among Women with Physical and/or Sensory Disabilities than Women without Disabilities in the United States.” Disability and Health Journal 10, No. 3 (July 2017): 400–405.
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