Forging the "New Man"

A conversation with Francesco Cassata (University of Genoa) which will analyze the development of eugenics in Italy, from the First International Congress of Eugenics in London (1912) to the establishment of medical genetics during the 1950s. Dr. Cassata will expose the complex interaction between eugenics and “racial science” during Fascism, focusing in particular on the definition of an alternative model of neo-Lamarckian, pronatalist and Catholic eugenics: the so-called “Latin” eugenics. Starting with the institutionalization of Italian eugenics in the early 1900's, Cassata will trace the participation of the Italian scientific community in defining biological racism and a skewed notion of “fitness” that became central to the fascist regime's juridical, social and ideological system.