STRANGE AND UNSTABLE BODIES: SHIFTING MATERIALITIES IN EARLY AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY CORRESPONDENCE NETWORKS by JULIE MARIE MCCOWN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Arlington May, 2016 Arlington, Texas Supervising Committee: Stacy Alaimo, Supervising Professor Neill Matheson Desiree Henderson Cedrick May ABSTRACT STRANGE AND UNSTABLE BODIES: SHIFTING MATERIALITIES IN EARLY AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY CORRESPONDENCE NETWORKS Julie Marie McCown, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2016 Supervising Professor: Stacy Alaimo This dissertation fills a gap in the study of early American natural history literature by investigating the representation of animal bodies within early American natural history writing and attending to the role animal bodies play in shaping natural history knowledge and how natural history in turn shapes animal bodies. It also examines the effect the shifting materiality of animal bodies has on constructions of race and ethnicity in early America, as well as the ways non-white, non-male, and non-human persons exercise agency via natural history correspondence networks. Employing animal studies, posthumanism, and new materialism, I contend that, within natural history’s correspondence networks, there occurs a constant circulation of ideas and information, as well as materials and bodies. Providing a crucial link between real animals and representations of them, specimens offer convincing, tangible proof of the natural world, allowing a more effective vicarious experience of American animals than just words or images. They enrich and enliven verbal and visual descriptions of them, but at the same time serve as reminders of how incomplete and partial a grasp natural history has over animals. Strange and Unstable Bodies incorporates media theory concepts of recursive feedback loops and media materiality, arguing that there exists a similar interplay in natural history discourse between information and materiality. Animal bodies complicate ii this interplay; in circulating through correspondence networks, they exist both as abstract symbols and as real material, alternately embodied, disembodied, and re-embodied. Attending to the circulation of information and material and how it affects and is affected by nonhuman bodies shows how the shifting materiality of animal bodies in natural history results in changing forms of nonhuman agency and creaturehood, and offers a reevaluation of how humans construct knowledge from the material world. iii Copyright by Julie Marie McCown 2016 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was support by a Dissertation Fellowship in Spring 2015 from the College of Liberal Arts. I thank my supervisory committee, past and present members. Thank you to Dr. Stacy Alaimo for her wonderful support and encouragement on this project, especially for her insightful and incisive feedback. Thank you to Dr. Cedrick May for his guidance and enthusiasm and for introducing me to early American literature in the first place. Thank you to Dr. Desiree Henderson and Dr. Neill Matheson for their willingness to join my committee late in the game and for their valuable feedback and suggestions. Thank you to Dr. Ashley Miller whose class inspired the paper that was the germ for my whole dissertation. v DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my family for their love, support, and patience, and to my writing buddies, Albie, Alice, and Winnie who kept me company at every stage of the writing process. vi Table of Contents ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................... v DEDICATION ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Illustrations .............................................................................................................. ix Chapter 1 Introduction: Specimens and Networks ............................................................ 1 Animal Studies And Media Theory ................................................................................ 4 Environment And Early America ................................................................................... 9 Animals And Early America ......................................................................................... 18 Natural History Networks And Early America .............................................................. 20 Bodies And Early America ........................................................................................... 25 Overview Of Chapters ................................................................................................. 26 Chapter 2 Redundant Representations: Making Sense Of Strange Live Animals ............................................................................................................................ 32 Experiencing New World Bodies ................................................................................. 36 Repeated And (In)Corporeal Bodies ........................................................................... 47 Extracted And Dissected Specimens .......................................................................... 52 Contingent And Harmonious Specimens .................................................................... 67 Strange Animal Assemblages ..................................................................................... 81 Chapter 3 Contagious Decomposition: Animal Specimens And Agency ......................... 87 Mammoth Teeth And Moose Skeletons ...................................................................... 91 Carnivorous Vegetables And Alligator Mediums ....................................................... 101 Animal Abstractions And Agential Pathogens ........................................................... 117 Diseased Bodies And Contagious Sympathy ............................................................ 124 Chapter 4 Dissolving Into Visibility: Bodies In Interspecies Encounters ........................ 131 vii Consumed And Consuming Bodies .......................................................................... 135 Bodily Circuits And Crab Invasions ........................................................................... 147 Embodied Perception And Dissolving Birds .............................................................. 153 Chapter 5 Epilogue: Feminized And Digitized: The Role Of Animal Specimens Beyond Early America ................................................................................ 168 Intimately Blended Animals And Plants ..................................................................... 174 Female Bodies In Taxidermy ..................................................................................... 179 Distanced And Digitized Animal Bodies .................................................................... 188 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 200 Biographical Information ................................................................................................ 215 viii List of Illustrations Figure 1. Engraving of coral-encrusted coin, jellyfish, and timber. Hans Sloane, Voyage to . Jamaica. ..................................................................................................................... 60 Figure 2. Brown Viper and Arum Plant. Mark Catesby. ................................................... 70 Figure 3. Alligator and Mangrove Tree. Mark Catesby. ................................................... 72 Figure 4. Fish Hawk or Osprey, Plate 81 in The Birds of America. John James Audubon, engraved by Robert Havell, Image Courtesy of University of Pittsburgh. ...................... 160 Figure 5. Black Vulture of Carrion Crow and American Deer, Plate 106. The Birds of America. John James Audubon, engraved by Robert Havell. Image courtesy of University of Pittsburgh. .................................................................................................................. 161 Figure 6. Untitled painting. Emilie Clark. Maxwell's Lair. 2009. ..................................... 169 Figure 7. Untitled painting. Emilie Clark. Maxwell's Lair. 2009. ..................................... 170 Figure 8. Emilie Clark. Untitled painting. Maxwell's Lair. 2009. ..................................... 171 Figure 9. Untitled Sculpture. Emilie Clark. Maxwell's Lair. 2009. ................................... 172 Figure 10. Maxwell in her hunting costume. .................................................................. 182 Figure 11. Maxwell "at work" in her studio. .................................................................... 182 Figure 12. ....................................................................................................................... 183 Figure 13. ....................................................................................................................... 184 Figure 14. ....................................................................................................................... 191 Figure 15. ....................................................................................................................... 191 Figure 16. ......................................................................................................................