Measuring Manhood describes how race became the purview of science and the processes by which race was constructed as a biological phenomenon with far-reaching social, cultural, and political resonance. It tells the story of an overlapping, interdisciplinary group of scientists who asserted their relevance and authority by offering expert advice America’s most pressing issues. These scientists often used gender and sex difference to conceptualize or buttress their claims about racial difference, but the mechanisms by which they did so constantly shifted according to what was at stake in that s ... More

Measuring Manhood describes how race became the purview of science and the processes by which race was constructed as a biological phenomenon with far-reaching social, cultural, and political resonance. It tells the story of an overlapping, interdisciplinary group of scientists who asserted their relevance and authority by offering expert advice America’s most pressing issues. These scientists often used gender and sex difference to conceptualize or buttress their claims about racial difference, but the mechanisms by which they did so constantly shifted according to what was at stake in that specific historical moment. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their conclusions about human difference naturalized socio-political difference—and hierarchy—in America. For these scientists, the physical body both reflected and determined the character of the social body. This book is also concerned with how the public received such ideas and how they shaped the way real people were treated. Accordingly, it examines a variety of sources, both textual and visual, to interrogate racial scientists’ engagement with social and political issues as well as the incursion of scientific thought into political culture.