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Although many associate eugenics with Nazi Germany, the United States employed a broad-based eugenics program that continued well into the 1970s, and able-bodied bias exerted a strong influence on American society during the Great Depression. Discriminatory legislation, in the form of “ugly laws,” made it illegal for people with visible disabilities to be seen in public, and with the Supreme Court’s decision in Buck v. Bell (1927) that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” numerous states adopted statutes that allowed compulsory sterilization of the “feeble-minded.” Considered by the medical and political establishments as unfit for normal roles in society, people with disabilities were excluded from jobs provided by New Deal programs, which, according to the WPA Workers’ Handbook, were reserved for “able-bodied” Americans who were “certified by a local agency.” Politicians, inspired by the notion of American exceptionalism and justified by pseudo-scientific evidence, enacted laws to limit the civil liberties of those considered undesirable, many of whom were women and/or people of color, and public support for discriminatory legislation was buoyed by visual culture, which constructed people with disabilities as less than, other, and immoral. This session seeks papers that examine the influence of eugenics on Depression-era art and explore the ways in which the “Average American,” one who was naturalized as white, able-bodied, and heteronormative, was visualized during the 1930s to propel a eugenic political and cultural agenda that persists to this day. Of particular interest are papers that address the intersectionality of gender, race, class, and disability.