Eugenics scholar to speak at WFU
Johanna Schoen, professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Iowa, will present the lecture “Eugenic Sterilization in North Carolina: History and its Lessons” on April 10 at Wake Forest University.
The free, public lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Carswell Reading Room on the second floor of Carswell Hall.
Schoen’s research uncovered the details of state-sanctioned eugenics and forced sterilization in North Carolina. In her upcoming book, “A Great Thing for Poor Folks: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare in the Twentieth Century” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), Schoen examines the history of women’s reproductive control between the 1920s and the 1970s.
Her research for the book provided the basis for the Winston-Salem Journal’s series of stories about eugenics, “Against Their Will,” published in the newspaper in December 2002.
Schoen received her doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work considers the history of gender and race in the United States through the lens of public policy, medicine and health care.
She has also published “Between Choice and Coercion: Women and the Politics of Sterilization in North Carolina, 1929-1975,” in the Journal of Women’s History.
Schoen’s next project, “Birds and Bees: Women and the History of Reproductive Health, 1970-2000,” will analyze the impact access to sex education and family planning has had on women’s lives.
For more information about the event, please contact Wake Forest’s sociology department at 336-758-5495.
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