Nineteenth-Century Theories of Race & Climate at Ark Encounter

Dauer considers the legacies of nineteenth-century race science in ongoing debates about the “facts” of race, climate, and politics. In 2016, a “life-sized” replica of Noah’s Ark opened in Williamstown, Kentucky. Ark... [ view full abstract ]

Dauer considers the legacies of nineteenth-century race science in ongoing debates about the “facts” of race, climate, and politics. In 2016, a “life-sized” replica of Noah’s Ark opened in Williamstown, Kentucky. Ark Encounter, which is operated by the Young Earth Creationist group Answers in Genesis (AiG), purports to be a historically accurate rendering of Noah’s ark. Dauer’s paper considers the use of nineteenth-century theories of race and climate at Ark Encounter and in the site’s framing materials. The overlapping discourses of race and climate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are well documented, in works from the Comte du Buffon, Thomas Jefferson, and others and in the emergence of polygenesis as a system of pro-slavery thought. Ark Encounter emphasizes the racism of nineteenth-century evolutionary theories. The site decries polygenesis, claims Christian monogenesis, and positions its own historically truncated anti-evolutionary views as anti-racist. AiG’s claim to an anti-racist and socially just position is especially notable given the political climate in Kentucky, where the governor embraces the Ark’s values while proposing detrimental cuts to the state budget. Dauer concludes by reflecting on the stakes of academic expertise in this political context.

Collectively, these papers offer timely ways of rethinking race and climate in American literature, culture, and politics.