Natural History's Shifting Materialities

I will briefly examine the relationship between natural history texts and animals in works by Catesby, Jefferson, Bartram, Crevecoeur, and Audubon, focusing on the bodies that circulated throughout natural historical... [ view full abstract ]

I will briefly examine the relationship between natural history texts and animals in works by Catesby, Jefferson, Bartram, Crevecoeur, and Audubon, focusing on the bodies that circulated throughout natural historical networks: how their materiality changed as they circulated and how that shifting materiality shaped both the kinds of knowledge people gleaned from them and also the animals themselves.  Focusing on animal bodies also reveals early American ideas on race and slavery. For example, the plantation system created bodies simultaneously open and porous, buffered and contained, a paradox rendered visible through the shifting materiality of bodies whose boundaries could dissolve in the face of interspecies encounters. This dissolve created a kind of strength through permeability and vulnerability, illuminating bodies in natural historical discourse and the degradation of bodies under slavery.