Fall/Winter Timetable
POL2322H1S L0101
Undergraduate Course Code: POL443H1S L0101
Topics in Comparative Politics II
Eugenics in the Twentieth Century: Keeping out Immigrants, Sterilizing the Mentally Handicapped
Themes
Eugenics, or the science of social engineering through better breeding, captured the imagination of generations of policymakers on the left and the right. The John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, and Sydney and Beatrice Webb were only some of those who accepted and endorsed eugenic arguments. Tens of thousands of mentally handicapped people in North America, and hundreds of thousands in Germany, were sterilized in the name of eugenics. Taking this history as its starting point, the course will have three aims: (i) understanding the content of eugenic ideas, (ii) exploring their influence on immigration and sterilization policy in democratic states, as well as genocide in non-democratic ones, and (iii) the evolution of eugenic ideas in the postwar period. In the last, we will consider the influence of eugenic ideas on the reproductive rights movement, above all in North America.
November 14, 2023
Congratulations to Madalyn Hay, a recipient of a 2023-2024 Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship. Madalyn, one of our doctoral students, holds a BAH in Contemporary Studies and Classics from the...
August 24, 2023
Congratulations to alumna Meaghan Williams, a recipient of the 2022-23 Governor General’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, the highest academic honour available to graduate students in Canada. Awarded annually by the Office of the...
June 14, 2021
Great news from the Canadian Political Science Association, which held its annual awards ceremony (online) over the weekend of June 12 & 13: Professor Stefan Rencken’s book "Private Governance and Public...
April 22, 2021
Congratulations to two political science alumni now teaching at U of T who have both won Superior Teaching Awards! Igor Shoikhedbrod and Khalid Ahmed will be celebrated on May 5th at...
August 6, 2020
Q&A with 2020 Vanier Scholar Yojana Miraya Oscco Congratulations to PhD student Yojana Miraya Oscco who has won a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (SSHRC). Launched in 2008, the program enables...
April 30, 2020
Congratulations to our graduate student Kevin Edmonds who has won New College's June Larkin Award for Pedagogical Development. A PhD candidate specializing in Caribbean political economy, histories of alternative/illicit development, foreign intervention and...