Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America

by David Serlin

After World War II, the United States underwent a massive cultural transformation that was vividly realized in the development and widespread use of new medical technologies. Plastic surgery, wonder drugs, artificial organs, and prosthetics inspired Americans to believe in a new age of modern medical miracles. The nationalistic pride that flourished in postwar society, meanwhile, encouraged many Americans to put tremendous faith in the power of medicine to rehabilitate and otherwise transform the lives and bodies of the disabled and those considered abnormal. Replaceable You revisits this heady era in American history to consider how these medical technologies and procedures were used to advance the politics of conformity during the 1950s.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, American, History, Disability Studies, American History, Gender and Sexuality

232 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

David Serlin is associate professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego. He is coeditor of Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics and Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism.

Reviews

[D. Travers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent window into thinking of body-as-culture, or using bodies and bodily practices as material for studying historic eras. Serlin adroitly connects five case studies in postwar body-reconfiguring technologies with emerging national identities and politics. Great text or chapters for medical history, technology studies, American studies. Chapters on Gladys Bentley and Christine Jorgenson particularly provocative for LGBTQ studies -- esp. Serlin's thoughtful treatment of Bentley's apparent hormone-fueled 'conversion' to heterosexuality.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this assigned reading more as it progressed. Skip the introduction if you want, its probably the worst part of the book (classmates agreed). The Gladys Bentley & Christine Jorgensen chapters are very well done, as well as being smoothly written.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is why Christine Jorgensen's autobiography is on my to-read list ...