New Work Group - Teaching about the Eugenics Movement in Connecticut: Racism & Resistance
Announcing a New Working Group Opportunity for Connecticut Educators
The Black and Latino History Project invites applications from CT K-12 educators to participate in a working group on “Teaching about the Eugenics Movement in Connecticut: Racism and Resistance.” Participants will receive a $400 stipend and meet three times via Zoom and one time in person from late January to early March. Sign up is here.
Background: In the 1920s and 1930s, Yale University and Connecticut became international centers of Eugenics research, policy advocacy, and public education. From New Haven, leaders of the American Eugenics Society advocated for the sterilization, incarceration, exclusion and denigration of huge swaths of the public. Their efforts would receive glowing admiration from Adolf Hitler and Nazi scientists, as well as many advocates of segregation and Jim Crow in the U.S. The legacy of the Eugenicists’ work continues to shape public education today, through standardized tests (originally created by Eugenics advocates), child development, health care, and psychology, and curricula used in many fields, from music education to genetics to statistics.
Their work also faced continued resistance from a wide range of communities, whose legacies we celebrate today in movements for Black Freedom, immigrant power, LGBTQ rights, affirming mental health care, and many others.
Working Group: Participants will develop curricular resources for use in their classrooms. One meeting will be spent at Yale Manuscripts & Archives in Sterling Library, where teachers will have a chance to examine primary sources and explore tools to integrate local histories and sources in their classrooms. This history is especially relevant in civics courses, modern U.S. and world history units, Black/Latinx studies courses, and historical context for biology and other science courses. Study of this topic will help teachers and students understand the racist and nativist policies and ideology and its influence on policy and systems. Lastly, the unit will explore notions of anti-eugenics in the form of multi-ethnic, multi-racial groups and organizations providing community care in Connecticut.
Facilitators: This working group will be facilitated by Daniel Martinez HoSang, Yale Professor of Ethnicity, Race & Migration and American Studies, Yale undergraduate researcher Dora Guo, and Connecticut historian and social studies teacher, Eve Galanis.
Apply/Sign up: To express interest, please fix out this online form, ideally by January 15, 2023.