Beyond Charles Knight: Women paleoartists at the American Museum of Natural History in the early twentieth century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Reitmeyer ◽  
Rebecca Morgan ◽  
Tom Baione
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Museum Displays ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Popular Images ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

ABSTRACT Under the direction of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Charles Knight helped shape popular images of the prehistoric past in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen turies. Although he was the most famous, Charles Knight was not the only paleoartist working at the American Museum of Natural History at this time. Behind the scenes, there were several women paleoartists who made significant contributions to museum displays and publications illustrating the prehistoric world. Often overlooked, this chapter highlights the contributions of Elisabeth Rungius Fulda, Helen Ziska, Lindsey Morris Sterling, and Margret Joy Flinsch Buba.

Collectors and Entrepreneurs: Hatcher, Wortman, and the Structure of American Vertebrate Paleontology Circa 1900

1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Rainger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Peabody Museum ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) and Jacob L. Wortman (1856-1926) were two of the most prominent figures in late nineteenth-century American vertebrate paleontology. Working at leading centers for the science, including Yale's Peabody Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, each was responsible for significant discoveries of fossil vertebrates and notable contributions to taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Yet both had itinerant and, by their own admissions, highly frustrating careers. Traditionally their problems have been explained in terms of personality, as a result of their sensitive, volatile temperaments. Yet their careers and difficulties also reflect the structure of American vertebrate paleontology at the time, a discipline centered in museums and under the direction of wealthy, powerful entrepreneurs. Men such as Othniel Charles Marsh and Henry Fairfield Osborn financed and helped to promote work in vertebrate paleontology, but the context within which such work was conducted also limited opportunities for Hatcher, Wortman, and others.

scholarly journals “Behind folding shutters in Whittingehame House”: Alice Blanche Balfour (1850–1936) and amateur natural history

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Opitz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Domestic Affairs ◽  
Private Collections

During the rise of professional biology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, individual naturalists continued to develop private collections by modest means and often within their own homes. Despite the increasing opportunities for women to participate in the sciences, the number of women entomologists remained relatively few. The amateur entomological career of Alice Blanche Balfour, the younger sister of Arthur James Balfour, first Earl of Balfour, reveals how a confluence of personal and social factors shaped a gentlewoman's capacity to pursue her interests in natural history. This paper revises earlier images of Alice Balfour by presenting her as an accomplished amateur naturalist who balanced her avocation with the responsibility of managing the daily domestic affairs of estate.

Faeries, Aliens, and Leviathans: Science and Fantasy in Ian McDonald's King of Morning, Queen of Day

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-303
Author(s):  
Richard Howard
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Irish Studies ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Unexplored Area ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Cultural Movement

Irish science fiction is a relatively unexplored area for Irish Studies, a situation partially rectified by the publication of Jack Fennell's Irish Science Fiction in 2014. This article aims to continue the conversation begun by Fennell's intervention by analysing the work of Belfast science fiction author Ian McDonald, in particular King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991), the first novel in what McDonald calls his Irish trilogy. The article explores how McDonald's text interrogates the intersection between science, politics, and religion, as well as the cultural movement that was informing a growing sense of a continuous Irish national identity. It draws from the discipline of Science Studies, in particular the work of Nicholas Whyte, who writes of the ways in which science and colonialism interacted in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland.

A Historiographical Interlude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan D. Teubner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth

The ‘Historiographical Interlude’ presents a brief overview of the cultural, social, and political changes that occur between Augustine’s death in 430 CE and Boethius’ earliest theological writings (c.501 CE). When Augustine, Boethius, and Benedict are treated together in one unified analysis, several historiographical challenges emerge. This Interlude addresses several of these challenges and argues that trends within late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship established some unfounded interpretive biases. In particular, this section will discuss the contributions of Adolf von Harnack and Henri Irénée Marrou, focusing on how they contributed, in diverse ways, to the neglect of sixth-century Italy as a significant geographical site in the development of the Augustinian tradition.

Extractivist Geographies: Mining and Development in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Peru

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Himley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
National Level ◽  
National Development ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Extractive Economies

In Peru, development dreams have not infrequently been hitched to the expansion of mining and other extractive activities. While the Peruvian state pursued strategies to stimulate mining expansion during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the geography of capitalist mining that emerged mapped poorly onto the national development imaginaries of the country’s elites. State-led efforts to mobilize subsurface resources in the service of national-level development conflicted with the tendency for extractive economies to exhibit uneven and discontinuous spatialities. Attention to the long-run unevenness of extractive investment in global resource frontiers such as Peru promises to deepen understandings of both world environmental history and the contemporary politics of resource extractivism. En el Perú, los sueños de desarrollo han sido enganchados con frecuencia a la expansión de la minería y otras actividades extractivas. Mientras que el estado peruano siguió estrategias para estimular la expansión minera a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX, la geografía de la minería capitalista que surgió no se proyectó bien en los imaginarios de desarrollo nacional de las élites del país. Los esfuerzos dirigidos por el estado para movilizar los recursos del subsuelo al servicio del desarrollo a nivel nacional contradijeron la tendencia de las economías extractivas a mostrar espacialidades desparejas y discontinuas. La atención al carácter desparejo a largo plazo de la inversión extractiva en las fronteras de recursos globales, como Perú, promete profundizar el entendimiento tanto de la historia ambiental mundial como de la política contemporánea del extractivismo de recursos.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document