An Introduction to Our Website
This entry, by Emme*, formally introduces our website, and outlines, links to, and explains what can be found in each section of this website.
*Emme Magliato (she/they) is a graduate of Yale University, who studied the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
After two years of labor, conversations, care, and research shared collaboratively with more than 12 high school students, undergraduates, and educators, we are overjoyed to share the first iteration of our Anti-Eugenics Collective website with the world!
The website features a eugenic timeline which breaks down this history decade by decade to illustrate patterns, themes, and continual contestations to eugenics. The timeline features links to further reading and can serve as a useful jumping-off point for people beginning this work. K-12 school teachers have begun implementing this tool as an interactive way for students to see the long history of eugenics and resistance to it.
We then have a section entitled “Situating our Work” which demonstrates the long line of anti-eugenic scholarship, organizing, and projects that we build upon and learn from.
The “Original Scholarship” page highlights the work of students who have engaged with the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale. The phenomenal work of students ranges from institutional histories of Yale University, the American Eugenics Society, the Institute of Psychology, the Medical School, and even a virtual anti-eugenics tour of Yale and New Haven. As this collective continues, more and more student works ranging from curricular units, creative projects, and senior theses will be added to the site.
We compiled a section for “Research Tools'' which highlights a “Annotated Research Guide” for a vast array of materials across the disciplines for reading, watching, and viewing. The guide includes sources related to music, statistics, indigeneity, genomics, sexuality, and much more. Each source has a short description to help guide you toward the sources that interest you the most! The Research Tools also contains a “Guide to the Archives'' to help navigate the archival materials housed at Yale’s libraries. Lastly, we compiled a Researcher Self-Care section that houses “Strategies for Conducting Research on Violent Topics” based on our experiences of how to feel cared for and grounded while doing anti-eugenics work of various kinds.
The final section of the site houses our “AECY News,” which ranges from blog posts, articles written in the news, and various events we’ve hosted.
Everything you see on the site is in its first form and we are already moving towards adding, editing, and reframing as we continue to learn from the archives and from you. As our collective continues to grow, so too does the expansiveness of our research and the perspectives of more and more people brought into this work. Already, K-12 educators have started implementing the website into their courses and fellow anti-eugenic scholars and organizers have circulated and visited the site as a tool -- their (and your) feedback is invaluable to us. Today, we celebrate the contributions of numerous people and programs who made this possible and imagine all the spaces and people we can continue to share with and learn from.