(Oneida, NY – Feb. 2014) Professor Giles Wayland-Smith will present in words and contemporary photographs the history of Oneida Community’s pursuit of eugenics in the post-Civil War period and its practice of “stirpiculture” on Saturday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. at Oneida Public Library, 220 Broad St.
Wayland-Smith will discuss how the Community’s founder and patriarch John Humphrey Noyes became enthusiastic about Darwinian theory and the emerging science of selective breeding and hybridization. Until the late 1860s, Noyes had advocated “male continence” in the Community and limited propagation. Adopting the new science, he developed his own theory of eugenics that promised the creation of superior human beings, in both the physical and spiritual senses.
In “stirpiculture,” a word coined by Noyes, the Oneida Community set about to selectively propagate among themselves. The result was 58 children, who were raised communally until the Community broke up in 1879.
Wayland-Smith is a retired professor of political science at Allegheny College, where he taught courses on Latin American politics, Marxism and literature from 1967 to 1999. He received the college’s Julian Ross Teaching Award in 1995. He is the author of “The Christian Democratic Party in Chile” (1968) and of numerous articles. He earned his B.A. from Amherst College (1957) and his Ph.D. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (1968).
In recent years, Wayland-Smith, himself a direct descendent of Oneida Community members, has frequently lectured on the Oneida Community, including at the OASIS Adult Education Program in Syracuse, Oneida Public Library’s Muses Seminars in 2009 and, most recently, Hamilton College.
For more information, stop by Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 363-3050.