Building the New Man

Francesco Cassata received his PhD in Contemporary History from the University of Turin. He published extensively on the ideology of Italian fascism and neo-fascism, and on the history of fascist racism. He is also author of the first in-depth study of Lysenkoism in Italy. His current research project concerns the Italian geneticist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso and the development of molecular biology in Italy.

• Acknowledgements Introduction CHAPTER I Between Lombroso and Pareto: the Italian Way to Eugenics 1. Lombroso’s Way: the Problem of Degeneration 2. Pareto’s Way: the Problem of the Elite 3. The Italian Committee of Eugenic Studies CHAPTER II Eugenics and Dysgenics of War 1. The War as Counter-selection 2. The War as Gymnasium 3. The War as Laboratory 4. Eugenics and the “Sons of the Enemy” CHAPTER III Regenerating Italy (1919–1924) 1. Ettore Levi and the IPAS Campaign for Birth Control 2. A Concrete Proposal: Premarital Certificates 3. Sterilization and Euthanasia 4. The Work of the “Useless”: Mental Hygiene in Italy CHAPTER IV Quality through Quantity: Eugenics in Fascist Italy 1. Corrado Gini’s Hegemony 2. Constitutionalism and Latin Eugenics 3. Demography and Biotypology CHAPTER V Eugenics and Racism (1938–1943) 1. Biological Racism and Hereditarian Eugenics 2. Environmentalist Eugenics 3. Esoteric-traditionalist Racism and Eugenics 4. Assortative Mating and Racism 5. Toward a National Genetic Center CHAPTER VI Toward a New Eugenics 1. SIGE Schisms 2. From Premarital Examination to Genetic Counseling 3. Eugenics and Catholic Medical Genetics CHAPTER VII Against UNESCO: Italian Eugenics and American Scientific Racism 1. The IAAEE and The Mankind Quarterly (1959–1965) 2. Meticciato di Guerra: Luigi Gedda and Reginald Ruggles Gates 3. Corrado Gini and the “Guerrilla War” against UNESCO 4. Epilogue: “Race and Modern Science” Conclusions Bibliography Index

"Cassata’s monograph is a long overdue and very welcome addition to the literature. It is an amalgamation of work that he has published in Italian—on Corrado Gini and related topics—and, significantly, an expansion of his Molti, sani e forti: L’eugenetica in Italia (Turin, 2006). Building the New Man is a serious and important study of an aspect of modern Italian history that remains relatively underresearched. New regional, national, and transnational case studies of eugenics in recent years have counterbalanced the Anglo-American and Nazi-centric bias in the historiography. Cassata’s book contributes exceedingly well to this ongoing and worthy project on global eugenics. The great strength of this work lies in the depth of its scholarship. Based on extensive archival research, his narrative shows great sensitivity to the plurality of approaches within Italian eugenics. Italian eugenics found a home not just in biomedicine, as was commonly the case, but also in the social sciences. The author rightly emphasizes that, despite this diversity, there was an overwhelming consensus of opinion within Italian medicine, science, and the state about the positive role that the environment, welfare, and society could play in engineering racial improvements over time. While accounts of eugenics more commonly stop in 1945, Cassata extends his chronological reach well into the 1960s. The wisdom of this choice is amply rewarded by that fact that he is thereby able to make a major contribution to one of the more interesting avenues of current scholarship on eugenics: that which is concerned to illuminate the relationship between the old and the new. Cassata examines the crucial issue of continuity in scientific and political discourses about race, and as he ably shows, the eugenetic project did not end with the fall of Fascism. No longer benefiting from Fascist state patronage, postwar Italian eugenics fell victim to discord and lost its relevance and purpose."