Document Type
Thesis
Summary Description
The thesis explores Connecticut’s role in the eugenics movement, revealing how state institutions enforced racial, gender, and mental health norms through sterilization, institutionalization, and segregation practices. Using theories from Foucault and Lefebvre, it examines how state power controlled bodies and shaped public space, while highlighting resistance efforts, especially by LGBTQ+ groups, against eugenics-based oppression. The work emphasizes the lasting impact of these practices on mental health and community resilience in Connecticut, with New Haven institutions, like Yale and the Clifford Beers Clinic, playing significant roles in both perpetuating and resisting eugenic ideologies.
Abstract
Throughout the twentieth century, the eugenics movement dominated medical discourses in the state of Connecticut. From deportations, coerced institutionalizations and sterilizations, to proposed executions of people with mental illness, eugenic policies were deployed in an attempt to control and direct populations. The state collaborated with academic institutions like Yale University, and agencies like The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, to endorse pseudo-scientific techniques of surveilling and administering bodies across intersecting lines of race, ability, gender, sexuality, class, and citizenship status. This research examines the biopolitics of eugenics and the contest for economic, geographic, social, and ideological space. Using theoretical frameworks illustrated by Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre, this inquiry considers the roots of eugenics in settler colonialism, how race science was normalized in everyday life, and the groups of people in Connecticut who challenged these dominant notions of wellness and ability. Incorporating archival sources and oral history interviews from pioneers of the state’s first LGBTQ+ movement, this research will also examine how activism and the struggle for self-determination are intertwined with challenging dominant systems of health.
Publication Status
Published
Category Tags
Mental Health and Wellness; Social Services; Gender, Sexuality, and Sexual Health; Activism and Advocacy; Healthcare
New Haven Neighborhood
New Haven (All)
Recommended Citation
Galanis, Eve, "THE STRUGGLE FOR EUDAEMONIA: THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT IN PSYCHOLOGY AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE IN CONNECTICUT" (2024). Academic Articles. 55.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/nhperl_articles/55
Supporting Teacher/Faculty Member
Diana Paulin
Student Type
Graduate (Master's)
Graduation
2024