Scope of Eugenics – Call for Submission – extended until March 1, 2015

The Scope of Eugenics
Call for Submissions

Eugenics Archives (eugenicsarchive.ca) is pleased to announce a four-day workshop at the Banff Centre, May 22nd-25th, 2015, in Banff, Alberta. To acknowledge the significant contributions made by students to the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project over the past four years, we invite submissions from early career scholars—students and those within three years of completing their doctorates—from any discipline on topics related to eugenics and its contemporary significance.

Submissions should consist of a single document that includes a (i) summary abstract (<150 words), (ii) longer description (<750 words) outlining the presentation and explaining the relevance of the topic to eugenics, (iii) short biographical statement (<100 words), and (iv) CV. Possible topics include, but are in no way restricted to, the following :

Apologies to eugenics survivors Child welfare
Collective memory Human diversity
Nationalism Quality of life
Queer sexuality Roma peoples
Schizophrenia World Health Organization
Whiteness Particular Countries / Geographic Regions

The project director is happy to provide feedback to potential participants on these and other suggestions (e.g., on particular countries or regions of the world). Participants are expected to attend the whole workshop and to contribute a short article to eugenicsarchive.ca, ideally based on their presentation, within one month of the workshop. Articles accessible via the Encyc or Around the World modules at the site indicate the type of article we have in mind.

Accommodation and meals for all workshop participants will be covered by Eugenics Archives. Participants will also be notified upon acceptance if we are able to cover in full, or contribute to in part, additional travel expenses. The workshop will allow for substantial opportunities to enjoy the Banff surrounds and will encourage networking, mentoring, and informal discussion between junior scholars interested in eugenics and Eugenics Archives team members.

Scope of Eugenics Poster with Mountains
Deadline for submissions : February 15th, 2015 EXTENDED to March 1, 2015 Acceptances : March 15th, 2015

Questions and submissions to the project director, Professor Rob Wilson : scopeofeugenics@gmail.com

Website: https://scopeofeugenics.wordpress.com/

Hosted by the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada

Philosophy, Eugenics and Disability in Alberta and Places North – Rob Wilson Part 2

On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north. Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson. This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog. Roughly four videos will be featured each week.

To download the full description of the symposium please click here.

With this video we begin the second part of the presentation by Rob Wilson (The first part may be found here). Professor Wilson’s presentation is titled “Building Inclusive Communities Through Practices of Collective Memory: The Case of Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta.” Part interim report, part philosophical reflection, this presentation is a glimpse into the ongoing process of exploring the eugenics history of Alberta.

Part 2

Highlights: reaction to relatively recent publishing of sterilization rates, quote from MacEachran on the value of sterilization.

A transcript follows the cut.

Philosophy, Eugenics and Disability in Alberta and Places North – Rob Wilson Part 1

On October 25, 2008, the What Sorts Network hosted a public symposium to examine, well, philosophy, eugenics, and disability in Alberta and places north. Four speakers were featured on the panel, Dick Sobsey, Simo Vehmas, Martin Tweedale, and Rob Wilson. This event was video recorded and over the next month we will highlight these videos on this blog. Roughly four videos will be featured each week.

To download the full description of the symposium please click here.

With this video we begin the first part of the presentation by Rob Wilson. Professor Wilson’s presentation is titled “Building Inclusive Communities Through Practices of Collective Memory: The Case of Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta.” Part interim report, part philosophical reflection, this presentation is a glimpse into the ongoing process of exploring the eugenics history of Alberta.

Part 1

Highlights: collective memory, particular practices of collective memory, constructive value of the very activity of remembering, direction of the What Sorts Network.

Transcript below the cut.

Memory, trauma, and morality

Cover from Jeffrey Blustein's The Moral Demands of Memory.

Supersonic Sue Campbell has just posted a detailed review of Jeff Blustein’s recent book The Moral Demands of Memory over at NDPR. Blustein’s book is focused on collective memory, trauma, responsibility, and identity, and has a sweep that few books in the field have. Sue draws on her knowledge of collective memory in the context of the residential schools commission in Canada in writing the review, as well as other concrete contexts (e.g., post-Holocaust studies). Check out the whole shebang if you’re interested; here’s a tease. Campbell says, in summary, that Blustein’s book:

is deeply indebted to a range of diverse literatures, carefully and extensively footnoted, and though the book is fairly long, it sustains an impressive momentum. Indeed the last two chapters — on remembrance and rituals of memorializing as love, care, and respect for the dead, and on the nature and importance of bearing witness —

Go See “Out from Under”

Today (or I guess technically yesterday) I took a great tour of the exhibition Out from Under with one of the curators of the exhibit, Catherine Frazee. It was a wowser, and I was appropriately wowed. The exhibition, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, consists of 13 remembered objects, each chosen by a participant in a seminar run by several of the curators, and each telling us a small part of the history of disability. Included is the watch depicted here, which belonged to Mae Brown, the first deaf-blind Canadian to graduate with a university degree. (Small prizes for those who know in what year she graduated.) The exhibit has some affinities with the book that Sherry Turkle from MIT recently published, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With,