Typecasting: On the Arts & Sciences of Human Inequality by Stuart Ewen

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Synopsis

"Typecasting is merely the most lucid and instructive history book to be published in the new millennium. "
-Kurt Vonnegut, author of A Man Without a Country

"In Typecasting, two ace historians offer a profound and sweeping study of the most everyday, often unconscious, forms of prejudice. [It's] bound to make you think-and think again. "

- Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch

- Investigating the practice of science in the service of prejudice, Ewen & Ewen bring to life the dark history of the Age of Democracy, where every step toward equality has found a parallel retreat into hierarchical dogma:

• In 1776, as some American colonials proclaimed that all men are created equal, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, court physician to England's King George III, subdivided humanity into five unequal categories.

• Early-twentieth-century socialist and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger saw one of birth control's potential uses as being a tool for curbing the procreation of "socially degenerate" populations: those "unfit" for democracy.

• In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University suggested "issues of intrinsic aptitude" were to account for the underrepresentation of women in the sciences and mathematics.

In this monumental work of popular history, Ewen & Ewen vividly expose the pivotal developments that have made stereotypes a persistent, common language. Moving across centuries and continents in thirty eloquent vignettes, their extraordinary journey uncovers the incubation of modern stereotypes in the halls of science and aesthetics and traces their materialization inthe popular imagination. Their detective work in museum archives, popular magazines, and film alike, uncovers how stereotype has served as the groundwork of power in the modern world.

Publishers Weekly

This fascinating if overly ambitious study examines the rise of stereotyping in modern society and how the mainstream stereotypes the "other" whether black, Jewish, gay, disabled, etc. to maintain social order. Ewen & Ewen the pseudonym of Elizabeth and Stuart Ewen, professors, respectively, of American studies and film and media studies have amassed a huge amount of material across a broad spectrum of disciplines, all providing concrete examples of how Western culture, beginning in the mid-18th century with the study of physiognomy (the evaluation of character based on facial features), has consciously created visual, verbal, scientific and artistic cues to identify those outside of the dominant culture. The Ewens' research is prodigious and their examples eclectic silent star Mary Pickford's film persona and notions of femininity, the social philosophy behind Roget's Thesaurus, blackface and minstrel shows, and George W. Bush's rhetoric on Iraq and this mass of information is extremely well organized thematically. While the Ewens' writing is clear and compelling, the overall effect can be overwhelming, and often the nuances get lost. Still, this is a terrific volume that will be eye-opening to academics and general readers alike. B&w illus. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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Biography

Elizabeth Ewen is Distinguished Teaching Professor in American Studies at SUNY, Old Westbury. Stuart Ewen is CUNY Distinguished Professor of Film & Media Studies at Hunter and History and Sociology at the Graduate Center. Ewen & Ewen is their authorial sobriquet.