Students will conclude this unit by creating a piece of art or digital media that responds to the history of eugenics in photography and/or music by presenting an anti-eugenic narrative; a story that resists ideas of biological determinism, cultural hierarchy, or exclusionary talent standards. Their project should challenge the values and systems examined in eugenics by engaging in themes that eugenicists tried to erase: diversity, dignity, non-normative bodies, community strength, cultural specificity, and lived experience.
Project Objectives:
By the end of this project, students will:
- Synthesize historical knowledge about eugenics in the arts with artistic or digital media representations
- Reflect critically on representation, power, and storytelling as a form of resistance
- Create original work that challenges exclusionary systems
- Develop their voice as a digital or visual storyteller
Format Options: (Choose Your Own):
Student choice is strongly encouraged for this unit project. Below are suggestions to provide for students as options, but feel free to brainstorm additional ideas or allow students to tailor their project to their interests and passions.
Audio or Music-Based
-Compose or remix a song or soundscape that resists control, uplifts marginalized voices, or reclaims a cultural tradition.
- Create a non-fiction podcast examining this history more in-depth and explore how eugenics influences culture.
- Compile a playlist of anti-eugenic music; songs that challenge dominant systems, celebrate diverse cultures, go against eugenic ideas around musical talent, speak to bodily autonomy and freedom, or uplift marginalized people
Photography or Visual Media
- Produce a photographic series, collage, portrait, or image archive that challenges ideas about perfect bodies, medicalized gazes, or racialized “types.”
- Photograph or curate portraits of people in your life who challenge dominant norms of beauty, ability, gender, or age.
- Use visual cues (lighting, pose, background, clothing) to tell a counter-story about who deserves to be seen, valued, or remembered.
- Create a 3-panel self-portrait photography series wherein Panel 1 illustrates how you’ve been labelled or seen, Panel 2 may represent a distorted or in-between self, or maybe how the people you love see you, and Panel 3 may demonstrate how you would want to be represented.
Short Video or Multimedia
- Create a social media series (ex., Instagram infographics, YouTube long-form content, TikTok short-form series) illustrating this history, raising awareness in the mainstream.
- Create a visual montage of things that eugenic tests couldn’t measure, such as love, joy, improvisation, grief, community, and cultural rhythms.
- Compile an audio/visual anti-eugenic sound collage incorporating ambient sounds, noise, or protest music, and juxtapose with images that promote the joy, diversity, and strength of marginalized identities.
Narrative or Poetic Project
- A poem or letter honoring someone (real or imagined) who was excluded by systems that claimed to measure value or ability. (ex., a family member or an ancestor with disabilities, an immigrant child, an undervalued culture)
- A spoken word piece rejecting genetic destiny or purity standards imposed on them.
-A historical fiction short play about a person undergoing Seashore’s musical testing and the barriers to artistic expression.
Content Guidelines:
Regardless of the format students choose to engage with, the project must contain at least one of the following anti-eugenic approaches:
- Reclaim: uplifts identities, sounds, or images that were silenced, excluded, or erased.
- Reimagine: imagines a world without eugenics and its logics
- Refuse: critiques systems of control, exclusion, or idealization
- Reveal: Tells a personal, familial, or ancestral story that challenges dominant narratives
Optional Extension:
Depending on the project format students choose, teachers may want to require students to include a short Artist’s Statement (250–500 words) explaining:
- Their artistic intent and process
- How their work engages with themes of the unit
- What specific ideas, texts, or histories shaped their response
It is the teacher’s discretion to determine assessment criteria, but to approach grading from an anti-eugenic framework, I typically assess based on intentionality, risk-taking and voice, engagement with the unit, engagement with the medium, the optional artist’s statement, as well as self-assessments and self-grading.
