POSTPONED: America & Its Unfit—Eugenics Then & Now
- Organizer: A/P/A Institute at NYU
- Venue: TBA
- Address:
New York University
New York , NY 10003 United States
This conference has been postponed to Fall 2015. Dates TBA.
Disoriented by the “unwashed” immigrants arriving every day, New Yorker Madison Grant’s screed The Passing of the Great Race (1916) sounded the alarm for elite Anglo American Protestants. The Eugenics Record Office emerged in the breach of this Gilded Age moment of great extremes—immense wealth and immense urban and rural poverty. “Slum clearance” was framed in a social Darwinist language of progress. Forced sterilization was justified in the name of “social efficiency.” Closing the gates was their survival defense.
Today, how have we pushed back these top-down exclusionary policies? How have times changed? How does this past still impact us? Join us for two days of brainstorming and problem-posing. Poets, musicians, scholars, performers, and writers come together to explore what we need to do now to make changes.
Image (R): Courtesy of University of Minnesota, Social Welfare History Archives.
A project by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Haunted Files consists of a series of installations and public programs, as well as an online space.