Darwin's Sirens

3 credits · Graduate

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) had a radical impact on the intellectual, cultural, and social history of Victorian Britain. The notion that human evolution was the product of accident or chance not preordination nor inevitable progress and that women “selected” their sexual partners forced philosophers, scientists, and politicians alike to think about Britain’s place in human history and the dangers of devolution for the human species. In this graduate seminar, we explore the multiple ways in which Darwin’s contemporaries responded to evolutionary metaphorics and analyse the ways in the selected writers address the underlying principles of evolution: the notion of a natural order, the eugenic implications of social and racial hierarchy, the atavistic dangers of error. From defense through excoriation of the New Woman, racial other, socialism, fascism, the rhetorical malleability of Darwin’s theory will be a central issue. FORMATS: Seminar