Connecting Histories: Exploring The Relationships Between Natural History and Environmental History Across Space and Time

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Chicago is home to one of the world’s largest natural history museums: The Field Museum. Inspired by the conference's location, this panel explores the relationships between environmental history and the history of natural history. What can these approaches to the past illuminate about the history of species, specimens, collectors, and collections? Our panelists represent a wide variety of disciplinary and geographical expertise, and through papers focused on different actors, institutions, regions, and processes, we aim to highlight issues important for environmental history, natural history, and the history of science: the production of environmental knowledge, the politics of conservation, and the pathways linking collectors, specimens, and institutions like the Field.

Mark Alvey, of the Field Museum, explores Carl Akeley and William Temple Hornadays’ contradictory work as both specimen collectors and conservationists in the United States and Africa. While Mark focuses on actors central to natural history institutions, Arjun Guneratne focuses on natural history outside the museum. Arjun argues that the British in Sri Lanka during the nineteenth century were motivated to preserve the natural environment because of their pursuits in hunting and interests in natural history. Ian Jesse’s paper returns us to North America by focusing on Maine fur dealer and amateur naturalist Manly Hardy. He considers the relationships between natural history and the animal turn. Chaired by Amy Kohout (whose work engages army men who collected specimens in the landscapes of their service) and with comment from Nancy Jacobs (whose 2016 Birders of Africa looks at African ornithological networks across several centuries), this panel will create opportunities for a conversation about what natural history actors and institutions can offer environmental history. This panel complements a behind-the-scenes collections tour at the Field Museum led by panelist Mark Alvey as part of this year’s ASEH conference field trip offerings.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• From Temple to Forum: The Field Museum, the Natural History of the Chicago Region, and Engagement with Communities - Mark Bouman, The Field Museum

• Coffee Planters and the origins of conservation in colonial Ceylon - Arjun Guneratne, Macalester College

• 'The Intelligence of Animals': Manly Hardy and the Animals of the Northeast - Ian Jesse, University of Maine

Chair

• Amy Kohout, Colorado College

Commentator

• Nancy Jacobs, Brown University