'From Small Beginnings...:'
Addressing the continuing shadows of eugenics
"Like a Tree, Anti-Eugenics draws from many sources and transforms them into a one mind and one heart way of being"
Judy Dow (Abenaki/French-Canadian educator and artist)
From Small Beginnings... There will be a programme of events across the world leading up to marking 100 years since the Second International Eugenics Congress held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (September 22nd-28th, 1921).
2021 marks the centennial of the Second International Eugenics Congress and provides an excellent opportunity to focus on how eugenics has been used and misused over the past century but still more importantly to critically assess how the intellectual inertia of eugenic habits of mind continue to globally influence political, social and medical ideas, in addition to practices and policies.
The From Small Beginnings… project therefore is facilitating a programme of international reflections across North America (California, the South, New England, Mid-West, Canada and Mexico), Europe (France, Scandinavia, and Poland) and also in India and Japan, as well as transnational discussions, an exhibition and virtual exhibition, a podcast series and the formation of a journal and eugenics atlas, to mark this moment. The programme will bring together a global group of scholars, educators, artists, activists and community representatives for shared meaning making in hopes of addressing eugenic legacies of the past and interrupting the future promulgation of this malignant ideology. Ultimately the series will generate an International Legacies of Eugenics Network for transnationally addressing the continuing and resurging shadows of eugenics today.