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Sick of the City: Conservation, Colonialism, and the Making of the “Healthy” Body

A screenshot of Beth's presentation Sick of the City

  • The rising fat liberation movement in the US is giving a voice to experiences of exclusion amongst fat outdoorists in nature spaces. To understand the origin of this marginalisation, this work examines American environmental history from the late 1800s to the early 1900s to reveal how anxieties of elite white men shaped wilderness and outdoor culture. It tracks the redefinition of wilderness from dark savage landscapes to pure nature spaces that existed in opposition from cities and how wilderness then became an antidote to the overcivilisation of urban bodies. Through this work, we argue that body size was a culturally impactful factor in establishing the ideal fit environmental body and the alienation of subjugated bodies from nature.

    • Cronon, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Environmental History 1, no. 1 (January 1, 1996): 7–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3985059.

    • Johnston-Goodstar, Katie. “Decolonizing Youth Development: Re-Imagining Youthwork for Indigenous Youth Futures.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 16, no. 4 (December 2020): 378–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180120967998.

    • Potvin, Leigh, and Blair Niblett. “Queer, Fat, and OUTdoors.” Parks Stewardship Forum 39, no. 2 (May 15, 2023). https://doi.org/10.5070/P539260973.

    • Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York, UNITED STATES: New York University Press, 2011. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csu/detail.action?docID=865462.

    • Powell, Miles A. Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.

    • Ray, Sarah Jaquette. The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013.

    • Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

    • Spence, Mark David. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York; NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000.

    • Strings, Sabrina. Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2019.

A screenshot of Beth's presentation called Herd Mentality

Herd Mentality: American Eugenic Conservationists in the 1900s and the Connection Between the Conservation and Eugenics Movements

  • US conservation history is typically retold from a Western perspective and has established iconic figures as founders who came to prominence during the conception of the conservation movement. However, another immensely impactful movement was growing concurrently in the US, eugenics. Previous scholarship has identified a significant number of prominent conservationists who were also leaders in American eugenics. In this paper, the historical figures who supported eugenics, here called eugenic conservationists, are profiled in one work to underscore the scope of this phenomenon. Furthermore, I use decolonial theory to propose an epistemological critique of the foundation ethos of Western science that could have made the uptake of eugenics so easeful for so many conservationists. I also use and settler colonial critique to expose how eugenics and conservation both aimed to engineer a future in which white American settlers would dominate the land through a logic of elimination. Taken together, these analyses argue that eugenic logics have always been and continue to be a part of the conservation movement.

    • Allen, G. E. (2013). “Culling the Herd”: Eugenics and the Conservation Movement in the United States, 1900–1940. Journal of the History of Biology, 46(1), 31–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-011-9317-1

    • Dyett, J., & Thomas, C. (2019a). Overpopulation Discourse: Patriarchy, Racism, and the Specter of Ecofascism. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 18(1–2), 205–224. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341514

    • Layden, T., David-Chavez, D., Galofré García, E., Gifford, G., Lavoie, A., Weingarten, E., & Bombaci, S. (2025). Confronting colonial history: Toward healing, just, and equitable Indigenous conservation futures. Ecology and Society, 30(1), art33. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15890-300133

    • Linett, M. (2023). Mind the Gap: Eugenics and Animality. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 17(4), 435–451. https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2023.33

    • Persinger, C. (Forthcoming). The Race Politics of Bison Conservation. Environmental Ethics, 47.

    • Powell, M. A. (2015). “Pestered with Inhabitants”: Aldo Leopold, William Vogt, and More Trouble with Wilderness. Pacific Historical Review, 84(2), 195–226. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2015.84.2.195

    • Schmitt, C., & Cohen, L. (2024). Untangling roots: Reflections on eugenics, conservation, and US national parks. Parks Stewardship Forum, 40(2). https://doi.org/10.5070/P540263642

    • Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1). http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18630

    • Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States. Beacon Press.

    • Ordover, N. (2003). American eugenics: Race, queer anatomy, and the science of nationalism. University of Minnesota Press.

    • Powell, M. A. (2016). Vanishing America: Species extinction, racial peril, and the origins of conservation. Harvard University Press.

    • Ray, S. J. (2013). The ecological other: Environmental exclusion in American culture. University of Arizona Press.

    • Spiro, J. P. (2009). Defending the master race: Conservation, eugenics, and the legacy of Madison Grant. University of Vermont Press ; Published by University Press of New England.

    • Stern, A. M. (2016). Eugenic nation: Faults and frontiers of better breeding in modern America (Second edition). University of California Press.

    • Taylor, D. E. (2016). The rise of the American conservation movement: Power, privilege, and environmental protection. Duke University Press.

Body Size and Nature Interview Study

A flyer with inclusion criteria for Beth's interview study about body size and nature

Recognizing and Addressing Oppression in the Sciences Graduate Course

A flyer for Recognizing and Addressing Oppression in the Sciences, Beth's graduate course

Inspiration and Intellectual Lineage