Acknowledgments

We are truly indebted to the wonderful contributors to this edited collection. Thank you for submitting your valuable scholarship and for your patience throughout the editorial process of this book. We have very much enjoyed your input, discussions, and collaboration on this project.

During the research period for this book, we have been further inspired, constructively motivated, and supported by various colleagues, students, friends, and to a significant extent by the members of the “Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada” group. We are extremely grateful and pleased to have the opportunity here to express our sincere gratitude to all of them, even if many will no longer recollect our earlier exchanges, draft discussions, and exciting conversations that we shared during our workshops and continuous research group meetings. We mention most of them here by name, as an expression of our deep gratitude to them: Erika Dyck (team leader, Archives and Collections), Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, Bruce Uditsky (team leader, Reproductive Choice in an Ableist World), CEO Emeritus, Alberta Inclusion; Anne Hughson, Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies, University of Calgary; John Dossetor, Health Ethics Centre, University of Alberta; Judy Lytton; Amy Kaler, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta; Christine Ferguson, English Studies, University of Glasgow; Nick Supina III, community visual artist; Dick Sobsey (ret.), Department of Educational Psychology and director of John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre, University of Alberta; Gregor Wolbring (team leader, Post-Eugenics Futures), International Centre for Bioethics, Culture, and Disability, University of Calgary; Geoffrey Reaume, Faculty of Health, York University; Doug Wahlsten (ret.), Department of Psychology, University of Alberta; Natasha Nunn (team leader, Technical Team); Michael Billinger; Glenn Griener, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta; Kathryn Harvey; Kyle Whitfield, Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta; Raymond Frogner; Colette Leung; Rob Wilson (team leader, Eugenics Frames); Alexandra Minna Stern, Department of Medicine, University of Michigan; Molly Ladd-Taylor, History Department, York University; Paul Weindling, Oxford Brookes University; Lene Koch, Department of Health Services, University of Copenhagen; Paul Lombardo, Faculty of Law, Georgetown University; Heidi Janz; Joanne Faulker, ARC Future Fellow, Macquarie University; John Sutton; Wendy Kline, Department of History, University of Cincinnati; Karen Stote, Women and Gender Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University; Allan Garber, Parlee McLaws LLP; Leilani Muir, sterilization survivor, activist, member of the Living Archives on Eugenics Governing Board; and, certainly, Moyra Lang, who as Living Archives on Eugenics project coordinator facilitated and supported the many steps that have finally led to the publication of this volume.

A substantial part of the book was compiled and written when Frank W. Stahnisch held a visiting scholarship at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society at the University of California at Berkeley. There, some of his colleagues read earlier drafts and graciously supported ongoing research steps toward this volume. The Office for History of Science and Technology at Stephens Hall provided a stimulating working milieu, which has thus far been incomparable. At the University of Calgary, our colleagues—especially in the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, the O’Brien Institute for Public Health, the History and Philosophy of Science program, and the Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine Studies laboratory—have provided a fertile and enriching context in which to complete this project. It has been our pleasure to work with Donna Weich, Beth Cusitar, Mikkel Dack, Brenan Smith, and Keith Hann, whose editorial advice and meticulous correction of the English in this manuscript fostered the writing process. We are furthermore indebted to the gracious support of a community-based research grant entitled “Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada – CURA,” from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, with Professor Robert A. Wilson at the University of Western Australia (formerly at the University of Alberta), as the principal investigator and project director. This financial support helped greatly at all stages of the research and publication process.

The archivists, librarians, and assistants at many libraries and archives provided crucial aid in collecting historical materials (see also the section Archival Sources and Library Collections). We are grateful for their professionalism and have benefitted from their knowledge in finding people, sources, and contextual information. As they are so many, we cannot mention them here by name yet would like to acknowledge the institutions to which we are extremely grateful for the help we received: the Mackie Family Collection in the History of Neuroscience and Taylor Family Digital Library at the University of Calgary; University Library of the University of Alberta; Provincial Archives of Alberta; Provincial Archives of Manitoba; Zweigbibliothek fuer Medizingeschichte of the Humboldt University of Berlin; the Medizinische Zentralbibliothek and the Library of the Humboldt University; the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz; the Deutsches Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany; the Aussenarchiv of the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry; the Archives of the Max Planck Society in Berlin; the Library of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main; the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main; the Archives of the Institute for the History of Medicine and Medical Museum at the University of Zurich; Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa; the Rockefeller Foundation Archives in Sleepy Hollow, NY; and the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.

We also thank Athabasca University Press in Edmonton for encouraging this project and for making this volume on the history of eugenics and its intricate connections with the history of psychiatry and neurology possible. In particular, we wish to include Megan Hall, Pamela Holway, Alison Jacques, Connor Houlihan, Marvin Harder, and Sergiy Kozakov along with two anonymous reviewers who commented thoroughly on our earlier manuscript.

Finally, we wish to extend special thanks to our colleagues in the University of Calgary’s History of Neuroscience Interest Group, who gave us frequent and highly constructive feedback during the planning and writing phases of this book. We would also like to thank the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences for their support.

Frank W. Stahnisch and Erna Kurbegović