Article ID: CBB304474086

Elements of a Counter-Exhibition: Excavating and Countering a Canadian History and Legacy of Eugenics (2021)

unapi

Into the Light, a recently mounted collectively curated museum exhibition, exposed and countered histories and legacies of 20th-century “race betterment” pedagogies taught in Ontario's postsecondary institutions that targeted some groups of people, including Anishinaabe, Black, and other racialized populations, and disabled and poor people, with dehumanizing ideas and practices. This article advances understandings of the transformative potential of centralizing marginalized stories in accessible and creative ways to disrupt, counter, and draw critical attention to the brutal impacts of oppressive knowledge. The “counter-exhibition” prioritized stories of groups unevenly targeted by such oppression to contest and defy singular narratives circulating in institutional knowledge systems of what it means to be human. The authors draw on feminist, decolonial and disability scholarship to analyze the exhibition's curation for the ways it collectively and creatively: (1) brought the past to the present through materializing history and memory in ways that challenged archival silences; and (2) engaged community collaboration using accessible, multisensory, multimedia storytelling to “speak the hard truths of colonialism” (Lonetree) while constructing a new methodology for curating disability and access (Cachia). The authors show how the exhibition used several elements, including counter-stories, to end legacies of colonial eugenic violence and to proliferate accounts that build solidarity across differences implicated in and impacted by uneven power (Gaztambide-Fernández).

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Article Alexandra Rutherford (2021) Going Public: Mobilizing, Materializing, and Contesting Social Science History. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 5-11). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB304474086/

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Authors & Contributors
Venegas, Cristina
Tyler David Morgenstern
Rixon, Gordon A.
Reetta Humalajoki
Bayne Peterson
Beverly Soloway
Concepts
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Colonialism
Science and race
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Medicine, traditional
Decolonization
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Canada
United States
Africa
Baffin Island
Alberta, Canada
Queensland (Australia)
Institutions
Canadian Museum of Civilization
World Health Organization (WHO)
University of Toronto
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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