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Literary Criticism Women Authors

Growing a Race

Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism

by (author) Cecily Devereux

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2006
Category
Women Authors, Feminist
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773529373
    Publish Date
    Feb 2006
    List Price
    $125.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773573048
    Publish Date
    Feb 2006
    List Price
    $110.00

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Description

Cecily Devereux reconsiders the extent to which McClung's enduring legacy of crusading for women's rights is founded on the ideas of British eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Caleb Saleeby and implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada. In a critical study of Painted Fires, the Pearlie Watson books, and several short stories, Devereux attempts to understand McClung's fiction in terms of its engagement with a politics of "race" and nation and constructions of specifically "racial" impurities that many women saw themselves as uniquely able to "cure."

About the author

Cecily Devereux is a professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her publications include Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism (2005).

Cecily Devereux's profile page