Document Type
Thesis
Date of Degree Completion
Spring 2021
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Committee Chair
Daniel Herman
Second Committee Member
Roxanne Easley
Third Committee Member
Stephen Moore
Abstract
The focus of this thesis are the American bison and wild horse conservation movements. The goal is to address how these movements utilized and manipulated gender as a driving force for conservation. Throughout the nineteenth century, bison and bison hunting became identified with American manliness, which provided an opportunity for men like Theodore Roosevelt to establish and develop their masculinity through bison hunting narratives. When bison populations plummeted in the late nineteenth century, these men turned conservationists, and equated bison preservation with preservation of white American manliness. They developed idiosyncratic views of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which allowed conservationists to advocate for sport hunting as way to distinguish themselves from non-white subsistence hunters, whom they blamed for the bison’s demise, and preserve their own manliness. Around a half a century later in the 1950s, Velma Bronn Johnston, a secretary from Reno, Nevada turned this paradigm on its head. In her advocacy for wild horses, Johnston both drew on older tropes of Western manliness and incorporated her own gendered tropes, which triggered a lasting feminization of the West and its resources.
Recommended Citation
Fleshman, Holly Charlotte, "Gender and Conservation: A Comparative Study of the Bison and Wild Horse Conservation Movements" (2021). All Master's Theses. 1511.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/1511
Included in
History of Gender Commons, Political History Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons, Women's History Commons