“There was no ‘first woman’”: The historical politics of gender, science, and exploration in twentieth-century US Antarctic fieldwork ...

• Main Author: Seag, Morgan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2021
• Subjects: Historical geography; History of science; Antarctica; Gender; Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.84696; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/337281

The following dissertation examines the history of gendered change in twentieth century Antarctic fieldwork, focused on the US Antarctic Research Program. It responds to the calls of feminist historical geographers and historians of science for critical analysis of gendered exclusion and inclusion in remote scientific spaces, which represents a lacuna in the studies of exploration and fieldwork. The dissertation responds with the first in-depth study of the norms, narratives, practices, and processes that underpinned the exclusion of women from US Antarctic activity through most of the twentieth century, as well as those that structured women’s eventual access. In so doing, it contributes to debates about gendered boundaries in science and exploration, illuminating a complex relationship between discursive and institutional change and arguing for greater appreciation of the link between historiography and social change. The dissertation advances both chronologically and thematically, its structure guided by ...