Pdf file of Fall 2006

Transcription

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Vol. 1 Fall 2006
From the Editor-In-Chief
3) Why did the editors choose these works?
Mirah, Ali and I selected these 16 works
(four of which are only available online at
www.amherst.edu/~thoughts) from 64 submissions. These were made up of 44 analytical papers, five creative writing pieces,
five images, three science papers, two dance
videos, four music recordings and one computer animation. Every work was created
by an Amherst student for academic credit,
with the exception of John Barbieri’s poster, which was created as part of a Howard
Hughes Summer Research Internship with
Amherst Professor Ratner.
Every child asks “why?” Eventually, most of
us are taught to stop asking questions and do
as we’re told. The thing I value most about my
Amherst education is that it’s taught me to ask
why again. Questioning things is in fact the
definition of the much-bandied phrase “critical
thinking”. There are three questions that I hope
this inaugural issue of Thoughts of Amherst will
make you ask yourself:
1) Why are we at Amherst?
Amherst College is an academic institution.
Despite the diversity of our interests and experiences, we’re all full-time students. However,
it seems to me that most students are defined
by their extracurriculars and that the work we
do in the classroom stays mostly in the classroom. The purpose of Thoughts of Amherst is to
showcase some of the excellent work that we all
spend so much energy and so many late nights
on but don’t often get to share. It’s also to dispel
any ideas that class work can’t be high quality,
interesting and fun at the same time.
We chose the works that we felt best demonstrated the diversity and quality of work that students can do at Amherst. We wanted to maintain
a good balance of work from different departments in different mediums, styles and levels of
technicality. However, the overarching criteria
for every selection were quality, accessibility
and relevance. We did not know what grades the
works received. Regardless of subject material
or style, each submission had to make us feel
intellectually enriched. To do so, they had to be
based on an exciting idea and to communicate
that idea clearly.
2) Why do we create?
Most courses at Amherst require us to write or
create something, whether a paper, an artwork,
a computer programme or anything else. There
are two reasons we do this: evaluation and communication. Of course it’s important that we be
evaluated in order to get grades and to learn how
to improve ourselves. But evaluation alone isn’t
enough. The point of working to attain comprehension and technical ability is to use that
understanding and those skills for the fun part:
exploring the unanswerable questions with others. Writing papers that are read by professors,
graded and handed back, never to be seen again,
doesn’t achieve Amherst’s stated goal of being “a place of dialogue, not monologue.” You
should produce things in order to communicate
your ideas to others, beginning that dialogue
that will take your ideas to places you never
dreamed they would go. Thoughts of Amherst
is a place for students to publish their work and
start these dialogues.
Thoughts of Amherst
From now on, we intend to publish the best
work from each semester in Thoughts of Amherst. In future issues we especially hope to see
more submissions from quantitative and artistic
fields, and more creative media that go beyond
the standard paper format, making use of the
multimedia capabilities of our website. If you
have feedback you want to share with the editors, the authors, or the community, please do
so. After all, that’s the whole point!
And whatever else you get out of Thoughts Of
Amherst, I hope that you’ll start asking yourself,
“Why?”
Pat Savage ’07
Founding Editor
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Table of Contents
Emanuel Costache ’09 ....................... Squirrel .............................. 4
Michael Kohl ’06 ................ An Urban Dozens .............................. 5
Andy Tew ’07 .................... Beauty in Agonism .............................. 8
Pamela Liu ’08 ..................... Mohos’ InAction ............................. 13
Jay Buchman ’07 .................. The Male Gaze ............................. 14
David Pechman ’08 ............ Working Memory ............................. 22
Laurel Chen ’09 ..................... Bad Hair Daze ............................. 30
Ryan Kao ’08 ............. A Reading of Antigone ............................. 31
Jake Maguire ’07 ................ Anti-Slavery Men ............................. 36
Ralph Collar ’07E ........................ Puppy Lust ............................. 47
Daniel Peterson ’09 ....................... Ichthyology ............................. 49
Front Cover: Fragrance, by Laurel Chen ’09
Medium: Linocut
Back Cover: kibou~protection, by Sawa Matsueda ’07
Medium: Film
Editorial Staff
Editor-in-Chief
Pat Savage ’07
Associate Editors
Mirah Curzer ’08
Ali Khan ’08
Alexander Urquhart ’08
Layout Editors
Sawa Matsueda ’07
Mark Yarchoan ’07
Web Master
Visit our web page at
www.amherst.edu/~thoughts
to see these other works in
different media:
Beau Alessi ’06
Murder on King’s Row [mp3]
John Barbieri ’08
Hughes Fellowship Poster [pdf]
William Chen ’07
Midnight Snack [animation]
Michael Kohl ’06
’Round Midnight [mp3]
Laura Strickman ’07
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Squirrel
Emanuel Costache ’09
This poem is an imitation of an unnamed one of 1,775 (or 1,789) much better poems by the granddaughter of a founder of the College.
s q u i r r e l
A selﬁsh squirrel with chubby cheeks
Is digging in the grass.
He’s unaware
Of my quick stare
As I pass - by to class.
What could it be, the thing he seeks
That’s hidden in the ground
Among the trees
And rotted leaves?
— The tiny, acorn mounds?
Would he say the sunlight leaks
Across the sky at dawn?
Or laud a star?
Or planet — far?
Or memory forgone?
• • • • • •
I turned to ask & he was gone.
2006
emanuel costache
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Eclogue 4,777: An Urban Dozens
Michael Kohl ’06
So too was mingled as though a
permanent
Fixture, this light upon the sidewalks.
And from some distant thoroughfare
A boombox banged its grim report.
‘Twas Nelly they were hearing from,
An urban Muse from dirty South
Whence hail the famous hip-hop stars:
Incomparable Outkast and Jermaine
Dupri.
A peculiar sound began to mingle
With all the noise and lo-fi furor.
Fair Tyrese recognized among its
Makers friends of his: Jamiqua,
Lucius, scarcely to be missed.
It was just so that Tyrese shirked
His duty to bring dinner home.
Instead he crouched among the shades
That shrouded this back alley, listening.
I’m an unabashed classics geek; the
only book I brought with me to college
was my well-worn copy of Vergil’s Aeneid. So when I finally made time to
take a classics course in my senior
year, I was ready to go a little wild.
Fortunately, Prof. Cynthia Damon’s
wonderful course on Major Roman
Writers (one of Amherst’s best-kept
secrets) gave my eccentricity ample
quarter, with several creative projects inviting us to try our own hand
at the genres we were exploring. This
particular assignment asked students
to compose an up-to-date rendition of
the pastoral dialogues contained in
the Eclogues. I decided to capture the
playful sparring and poetic mood of
Vergil’s work by protraying a modern
equivalent: an inner-city ‘dozens.’ After some of the classic smut our venerable professor showed us from Catulus and Co. at the beginning of the
semester, I felt I had plenty of license
to take things below the toga.
JAMIQUA:
I swear, my cousin Lucius, there’s
No way that you could step to this.
My acumen is world-renowned
My followers are manifold.
I’ve boned more bitches, caused more
stitches,
Got more riches, all of which is
Why you can’t afford to run
Your mouth the way you’ve lately done.
But since we’re on the topic, bring
Your posse out to pasture. Let them
Hear the truth behind the fables:
Your mom’s so fat, her bed’s a stable.
[VERGIL/ TYRESE/ JAMIQUA/
LUCIUS]
VERGIL:
The day was waning in the ‘hood
When young, strong Tyrese came to call
Upon his homies. But to his dismay
They were nowhere to be found.
The streets were empty, save a bum
Hoarding treasures from rubbish bins.
In failing light, which, just as cement
Meets aggregate to make concrete,
Thoughts of Amherst
LUCIUS:
Jamiqua, what a brilliant show!
Who writes your stuff? ‘Lil Romeo?
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Michael Kohl - An Urban Dozens
But I’m no kid you’re messing with.
My fame will last a million years
And then one extra, to recount
The foes I’ve slain and bling I’ve got.
I dropped five empires with one shot.
I’m the one you’ve heard about in
Harlem,
The one that Chico fears, and every street
‘Twixt 5th and 31st knows better
Than to talk smack about a real gangsta.
But as for all the shit you’re spittin’,
Let me clear a few things up.
It’s funny you should choose a horse
To spearhead your laughable attack.
Last I checked, the horsy one’s your
sister,
Bayonne (the hell kind of name
Is that anyway?), whose lips are spread
As though she were a container of butter.
And incidentally, you’re mom’s so fat
That butter courses through her veins,
Like blood, only thicker, and all that shit:
Guess that’s where Bayonne ‘dun get it!
With that dirty petrol hue of yours.
LUCIUS:
How nice of you to mention oil.
My ancestors were Muslim conquerors.
I get my color from the likes of Saladin.
On my father’s side there’s Idi Amin.
So half my beauty’s the Arabian sun,
The bounty of Allah in natural form.
The other half’s the eastern Sahara,
Whose heat your likes could never stand.
I’m a beautiful black prince in the order
Of Shaka Zulu. Your tone is nothing.
You’re cream. You’re half and half.
Me not black? Don’t make me laugh.
JAMIQUA:
Let us please stick to the topic at hand.
You’re mom’s got more chins than China
Land.
I see your flock of sickly lambs
All staring at me as though I were crazy.
I kindly remind your sheep it’s now
Hunting season, and me and my own
Herd have their pistols. Back off,
You thugs, I’m not quite finished.
Lucius, I don’t care who brought
You up; got no regard for the
Long line of dead Arabs you invoke.
Nor do I care how much money
You’ve managed to get your grimy hands
On now. Willis schooled me to the game.
Now he’s gone, but I’ve stepping into
His wide shoes.
JAMIQUA:
“It” and “shit”? That rhyme was whack.
You call what I just said an “attack”?
Bitch, I’ma kill you. You ain’t even
black.
LUCIUS:
Not black enough for whom, I wonder?
You must be colorblind, or else
You’d see my hue’s darker than yours.
There’s a little truth to what you’ve said.
I’m Roman Meal; you’re Wonder bread.
LUCIUS:
JAMIQUA:
Speaking of wide,
Your mother’s derriere is so massive
That when she backs up, one hears
“Beep, Beep, Beep,” just like a garbage
truck,
Carrying the most vile of cargoes,
Alerts innocent pedestrians
That it is now retreating.
Dark you may be, but I’m ebony,
A beautiful tint. Halle Berry
Can’t get enough of me. And all
The ladies from Diego to Detroit
All line up for a piece of this.
I’d like to see the ass you pull
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Michael Kohl - An Urban Dozens
JAMIQUA:
LUCIUS:
You’re the one who’ll be retreating,
Lucius.
Do you not know with whom you toy?
D-Fuzz, Teddy and Spaztic Matt all fear
me.
Word on the street is Jamiqua’s a killer.
I’m known in some circles as Gabby J,
Quarrel, Killa, and Milky Way.
Fred the Conqueror calls me Slash.
And rightly so, you may soon find.
The very same. Let us alight.
But before we go, your mother smells
like…
LUCIUS:
LUCIUS:
All those cats are old, Gabby J.
Even you must admit that my list of
Referrals far dwarfs yours. First,
There’s Latte, terror of Queens,
Who counts me among his right hand
men.
Then there’s Clive “The Shark” Dawson,
Who gives me, in a manner of speaking,
Free reign over his swimming pool.
And the breast strokes that I there enjoy
Have earned me another nickname,
Gabby J.
Perhaps you’ve heard it? “Super
Smooth”?
Same time, same place.
JAMIQUA
…good pressed cheese.
I’ve heard that one before, Lucius.
You used it just lat week.
So, same time, same place?
JAMIQUA:
Solid.
And just in case my barbs went in
Too deep this time, let me say
That you are my homie, and I would
Never mean it in anything other
Than purest jest, so help me God.
LUCIUS:
By God, then, it’s all gravy, coz.
The night has fallen, and in the sky
Proud Orion makes himself know,
But what manner of gat his
Belt conceals, we know not.
Come, Jamiqua, the beat is gone,
And now there is this siren’s wailing.
Let us depart.
JAMIQUA:
I’ve heard it, alright, Super Smooth.
Your mother told it to me last night
As we were celebrating the
Autumnal Equinox together.
LUCIUS:
Michael Kohl graduated in May 2006 with
a double major in Music and English. He
was also involved in a lot of extracurricular activities at Amherst, especially within
the performing arts. Since college he has
moved back to Los Angeles and is currently working as a performer, composer and
producer. All of which means he’s currently seeking gainful employment.
And a fine harvest I hope it was
Jamiqua, for it will be your last.
JAMIQUA:
But what’s that now? Is that
A cop car I hear?
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and The
Hoerengracht:
The Possibility of Beauty in Agonism
Andy Tew ’07
of interaction between the two.
Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon provides an ideal testing
ground for these inquiries. This revolutionary piece, kept in the artist’s studio
for years as he wrestled with its staggering implications, was perhaps inspired
by Matisse’s Joy of Life; it departed
from the “idyllic and sensual” themes
of that work, however, to find its own
“jagged, crowded, urban, and sexual”
realities.1 The essential conflict of the
piece is exposed in Picasso’s treatment
of his subjects, the prostitutes: he superimposes on three of them faces which
stem from Iberian sculpture and African
masks, presenting a juxtaposition of the
“primitive” and the “civilized”;2 elements such as harsh color contrast and
vertiginous perspective maintain this
carefully wrought chaos. Furthermore,
while preparatory drawings for the work
reveal two male figures among the prostitutes, the final version removes these
buffers, aggressively transplanting the
viewer into the role of customer. Thus,
The prompt for the essay was to
choose two pieces of art to analyze
through the context of any lecture
topic over the course of the semester
(this was an art history course I took
at the University of Western Australia). Naturally, I chose the lecture on
agonism-- it allowed me to incorporate some readings/ideas I had been
exposed to in my first year seminar,
Beauty (with the rockin’ John Drabinksi).
A
gonistic art, as conventional
thought goes, finds its roots
in challenge. In encountering
a work which confronts, it is expected
that the viewer locate new frames of
reference. Less certain in the conventions of art theory, however, is the relationship between agonism and beauty.
Can a confrontational piece be beautiful? Specifically, must the proposition
of conflict in art—which is itself loaded with conflicting interpretations—
preclude certain forms in order for the
viewer to successfully work towards
finding new such frames? In unpacking
these possibilities it is necessary to investigate notions of aesthetic and functional beauty, the nature of agonism,
and perhaps most crucially, the spheres
Thoughts of Amherst
1 Andrew Brighton and Ndrezej Klimowski,
Picasso for Beginners, ed. Richard Appgnanesi
(Cambridge: Icon Books, 1995) p. 43.
2 Brighton and Klimowski, p. 48.
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Andy Tew - The Possibility of Beauty in Agonism
Picasso’s association of prostitution and primitivism requires—even demands—a
subjective response. The scene, which at one stage was conceived of as a “moral
dilemma,”3 confronts the viewer with a version of reality that must be reconciled
as problematical, acceptable, or somewhere in between.
While Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’s departure from traditional stylistic
techniques and composition4 earned Picasso disparagement from many contemporary artists and critics, it is widely hailed today as a work of genius. The current
art world no longer fixates on perceived flaws of the innovative design; rather, it
is viewed as the grandsire of all modern art, the most recent and significant fork in
the road. By transcending surface issues in order to contemplate the myriad meanings of Les Demoiselles (Picasso claimed it was his first “exorcism painting,” one
in which he focused on the “danger” of “life-threatening sexual disease,” a considerable problem for prostitutes in Paris at the time5), modern viewers find beauty
in previously ignored dimensions.
This break in attitude reflects on expanding theories of beauty that have
progressively pervaded the aesthetic landscape. Kant believed that the quality of
beauty in art is something akin to “purposiveness without a purpose”; we appreciate beauty when it “stimulates our emotions, intellect, and imagination,” though
we must recognize a beautiful object’s “rightness of design” while ignoring “the
object’s purpose.”6 Picasso’s painting would, according to skeptical viewers of
his time, fail Kant’s beauty test: for instance, the brash strokes which define each
figure’s body go against accepted principles of “rightness.” Meanwhile, the painting loses impetus if no attention is paid to its weighty themes. Given the nearly
wholesale approval of Picasso today, Kant’s theory seems faulty. Or, rather, it
lacks appropriate qualifications. Indeed, how does one judge “rightness”? Doesn’t
the “intellect” involve itself in beauty judgments because it can appreciate both
aesthetic and “purposeful” artistic decisions simultaneously? In a roundabout way,
Kant dismisses the ability of agonistic art (or, more specifically, art with a social
purpose) to be beautiful. For this writer, at least, he is mistaken. Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon does indeed express beauty: the eyes in the picture convey a quiet and
profound haunting quality, and the same sentiment goes to the faces of the masks.
Combined with the knowledge that Picasso was taking a great risk with this work,
it is hard not to appreciate both effort and result as full of beauty.
3 Richard Read, Course Lecture. University of Western Australia. March 1, 2006.
4 “Commentary on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA.org).
http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79766 (accessed 11/05/2006).
5 “Commentary on Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” MoMA.org
6 Cynthia Freeland, “Blood and Beauty,” in Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), pp. 6-8.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Arthur Danto, a more recent aesthetic theorist, proposes an alternative
model of beauty. He posits that for a work to be truly beautiful, “external beauty”
must match “internal beauty.”7 (This concept is similar in philosophy to Meyer
Schapiro’s “unity of form and content,” which predates Danto’s writings by some
decades.8) Danto also argues, however, that elements such as beauty and humor
attend a “healing” capacity in art, and should thus be avoided by the “moralist”
artist who aims to shake viewers into a realization of unattractive truths.9 By this
standard, Picasso’s work can be termed as beautiful and non-beautiful simultaneously: one might find that the chaotic, violent, and disturbing “external” form of
the painting complements the same “internal” (or thematic) attributes while having this overarching harmony interfere with an internalization of Les Demoiselles
message. Needless to say, this paradoxical conclusion needs some fleshing out.
An analysis of Ed Kienholz’s and Nancy Reddin Kienholz’s mixed media
tableau, The Hoerengracht, will help illuminate the subject. Its title, translated
as “The Whore’s Canal,” captures the gist of the work, which is a life-sized representation of the streets and buildings in Amsterdam’s ‘Red Light District.’ The
installation draws on Kienholz’s characteristic maximalist style, overwhelmed by
the “clutter of life” and objet trouvés which fill each of his rooms and in this case,
the exterior space of the street.10 In Grace Glueck’s words, the viewer of this work
interacts with it:
The Hoerengracht allows the viewer to enter and actually walk around the
streets and alleys, peering into the garish, lighted rooms of the prostitutes.
Mannequins in various stages of dress are visible in doorways and through
windows as they wait for customers. Each wears a metal picture frame
around her face, a folded-down bottomless box that isolates the head as a
portrait from the body.11
Like Picasso’s treatment of prostitution, the installation places the viewer
in the role of customer; likewise, the faces of the women are altered, in this case
“framed” as opposed to “primitive-ized.” Kienholz and Reddin Kienholz highlight
7 Arthur Danto, “Beauty and Morality,” in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics, ed. Bill
Beckley & David Shapiro (New York, Allworth Press: 2001)
8 Meyer Schapiro, “On Perfection, Coherence, and Unity of Form and Content” in Uncontrollable Beauty:
Toward a New Aesthetics, ed. Bill Beckley & David Shapiro (New York, Allworth Press: 2001)
9 Arthur Danto, The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2000), p. 209.
10 Robert L. Pincus, On a Scale that Competes with the World: The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin
Kienholz. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 4.
11 Grace Glueck, “Ed and Nancy Reddin Kienholz: ‘The Hoerengracht’,” Art in Review (February 2002).
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D6143CF93BA35751C0A9649C8B63 (accessed
10/05/2006).
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
issues of objectification and self-conscious display with these frames (there are
two kinds: face frames and window frames, the latter separating the viewer from
the “girls’ inner sanctum”12) while hinting at still darker themes such as violence
and socioeconomic exposure (one mannequin leans forlornly against a lamp post,
visibly shaken with tears in her eyes). Nancy Reddin Kienholz, in an interview
taken after husband Ed Kienholz’s death, cited two particular motivations for the
piece: one was Ed’s initial attraction to the “beautiful” light coming from the windows of the ‘District’; the other was a desire to advocate the universal legalization
of prostitution, in order that they be “protected” by the law.13
The Hoerengracht captures the agonistic momentum of Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon in its forceful attention to the conflicts inherent in a profession such
as prostitution. How then, it follows to ask, would Danto evaluate the possibility of beauty in such conflicts? Fortunately, Danto has addressed the work of Ed
Kienholz in writing, touching on these subjects with his characteristic elegance in
a critical retrospective:
It must be admitted that Kienholz’s mastery of grit, funk, and visual squalor abetted him.… He had learned to create pain: The appropriate response
to any one of his characteristic works is a wince. For the remainder of his
creative life (he died in 1994), he enlisted visual ugliness in the war on
moral ugliness. Beauty simply fell out of the equation, unless it was there
to hurt.14
Here there is a seeming contradiction: Danto claims that Kienholz both
abandons beauty (it “fell out of the equation”) and employs it for the sake of “hurt”
against the viewer. He identifies the match between external and internal beauty—
“visual ugliness” goes with “moral ugliness”—but in a non-beautiful context. This
contradiction, which goes along with the theoretical paradox mentioned earlier in
this essay, can be partially explained by Danto’s implicit separation of beauty into
separate classes: namely, beauty which is involved in moralistic art and beauty
of sheer aesthetic pleasure. One might coin these as ‘deep beauty’ and ‘immediate beauty’; the former lives in the uncomfortable truths revealed by eyes in Les
Demoiselles or picture frames in The Hoerengracht, while the latter has more to
do with the visual harmony which Monet captures so well in his Water Lilies series. Despite this clarification and despite a tone of confidence which characterises
12 Rosetta Brooks, Commentary in Kienholz: A Retrospective (New York: Distributed Art Publishers/
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996), p. 216.
13 Nancy Reddin Kienholz, “Chronology” in Kienholz: A Retrospective (New York: Distributed Art
Publishers/Whitney Museum of American Art, 1996), p. 267.
14 Danto, The Madonna of the Future, p. 207.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
most art critics, Danto is not completely convincing in his argument on the operation of beauty in agonistic art. There are too many distinctions. Additionally, his
equation of agonistic art with moralistic art—which echoes Kant—seems hasty.
It seems inevitable that the attempt to section off different types of beauty
from each other or to classify and subordinate beauty appropriate to agonistic art
as opposed to mainstream art (as if there is a black-and-white dichotomy between
mainstream and agonistic approaches in the first place) must end in compromise.
It is like attempting to cut water with a knife; there will always be exceptions that
break a newly devised rule and there will always be people who see things in a
different light. To wit, an acquaintance and I both remarked upon the beauty of
the lights upon seeing The Hoerengracht at a Kienholz exhibition at the Sydney
Museum of Contemporary Art recently. While parts of the piece certainly invoked
“visual ugliness,” there were others that struck us as sublime, and we would have
been hard pressed to pinpoint the reason. In retrospect, appreciating this beauty
didn’t detract from our absorption of the gravity which the piece conveyed, but
rather added to it: seeing echoes of beauty in such a difficult scene enhanced our
appreciation of the entire spectrum.
In the end, I don’t intend to argue for the abandonment of the study of
beauty or to simply state that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ (a cop-out if
there ever was one). Instead I suggest that beauty in agonistic art has the same
properties and limitations as that in any other kind of art: it is mysterious, sometimes fleeting, sometimes overwhelming, and often present in some form or another. And as Rilke advises, “we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive
holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is
characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against
all opposition.”15 In other worsds, difficult art challenges us to become more integrated human beings; this “natural” striving embodies goodness and, in its own
way, beauty too. It is only in ignoring or overlooking the conflicts in art that we
gain nothing, find no beauty—and as a result forfeit any benefit that art might have
allowed us in the first place.
Andy Tew is a senior psychology major. He is also a cellist in the orchestra, a
Student Health Educator, and a member of the Men’s Project. His favorite artists
from various disciplines are Caravaggio, El Greco, Diane Arbus, Aaron Copland,
Brian Wilson, and John Steinbeck.
15 Rainer M. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Trans. M. Norton (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1993), p. 53.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Mohos’ InAction
Pamela Liu ’08
Mohos’ InAction: acrylic on paper, 3’ x 4’
Pamela Liu is especially interested in Surrealist paintings and East Asian art. She
is currently a junior majoring in Fine Arts with a history concentration. Next year,
she plans to write a thesis while applying to dental schools in California and New
England.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Challenging the Male Gaze
Jay Buchman ’07
which we view film. The main feminist
film theory discussed in this paper will
be Laura Mulvey’s concept of “the
male gaze.” In explaining that theory,
this paper will discuss the important
distinction between narcissism and
voyeurism, and will claim that Law’s
inability to understand others’ motivations is imagined as stemming from its
bias toward voyeurism.
This paper discusses a feminist theory, ‘the male gaze,’ of how women
have traditionally been depicted in
film, and it analyzes The Silence of
the Lambs and A Question of Silence
in that framework. It also asks why
all of this is important for the law.
Researching this work was a pleasure
because it exposed me to a feminist
way of looking at film and even the
world around me. Once I opened my
eyes to the feminist components in
Silence of the Lambs and A Question
of Silence I realized the brilliance of
both films. I worked especially closely
with Martha Umphrey on this project.
She is a knowledgeable resource for
questions about feminist film theory,
and a great person to talk to about the
law in general. I submitted this paper for LJST 25: Film, Myth and the
Law.
O
ur understanding of spectatorship is inextricably intertwined with questions of
sexual difference. This paper will apply the feminist concept of “the male
gaze” to the depiction of spectatorship in the films Silence of the Lambs
and A Question of Silence. These two
films challenge the very conventions
that have traditionally governed the
depiction of women in film; yet they
subvert those very same conventions,
making us question the manner in
Thoughts of Amherst
I. Background
In the 1970s feminists began to examine film history, and the critiqued
the traditional methods of depicting
women in film.1 European feminists
especially focused not on the ideological content of films, but rather on how
cinematic techniques represent sexual
difference. Many of these feminist
thinkers also used psychoanalysis and
semiotics, which is the study of signs
and symbols. One of the first feminist
film critics, Claire Johnston, analyzed
the role of women in early cinema and
reached a very somber conclusion: the
sign ‘woman’ means nothing in relation to herself, and only carry meaning
in relationship to men.2
1 Smelik, Anneke, And the Mirror Cracked:
Feminist Cinema and Film Theory (New York,: St.
Martin’s Press, 1998) 7-8.
2 Smelik, 9.
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Jay Buchman - Challenging the Male Gaze
British feminist and film theorist Laura Mulvey first introduced ‘the
male gaze’ when she applied Freud’s concept of scopophilia, the desire to
see, to film in her groundbreaking article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema.’ She argues that men’s and women’s roles in film are defined and
enforced by the types of pleasurable looking that are afforded to male and
female audience members. Two categories of pleasurable looking are discussed by Mulvey: voyeurism and narcissism. Voyeurism involves deriving
pleasure from viewing a distant other, and projecting one’s fantasies, usually
sexual, onto that person. Narcissism involves some recognition of one’s self
in the image of another we are viewing, or some sort of association with that
other. Most films place women on the screen as passive objects to be looked
at, allowing male audience members to perform the role of the voyeur. The
contrast of the dark theater with the bright screen provides the necessary illusion of distance for voyeurism to take place.
However, a serious problem exists for women: the female movie-goer
is denied voyeuristic pleasure. Women are the image on screen in most standard Hollywood films, which leaves women viewers with two undesirable
options. They can identify with the passive image they see on screen, forcing them to imagine themselves as passive. Or female spectators can assume
the active viewpoint of the male voyeur, but remaining “restless in its transvestite clothes”3 suffering from confusion about their gender. This second
option constitutes what some feminists have called the “masquerade” of the
female spectator. Indeed, the undesirability of roles open to female audience
members has caused other feminists to wonder whether female spectatorship is even possible at all.
Traditional films reinforce the gender-based voyeur/narcissist roles in
a variety of ways. The camera in these films almost inevitably focuses on the
female as a sexual object, thereby imagining male viewers as voyeurs, and
leaving female viewers with the unpleasant choice of being either transvestite or passive object. Second, male film characters are traditionally cast as
voyeurs and women as passive objects, with the purpose of subconsciously
priming the audience to exhibit likeminded behavior. Together these conventions are known by feminists as ‘the male gaze.’ The male gaze is faulted
for instilling in female characters a “to-be-looked-at-ness” quality, and also
for labeling men as actors and women as acted-upon.
3 Mulvey, Laura, Visual and other Pleasures (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1989) 37.
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II. The Silence of the Lambs
Mulvey’s and other feminists’ ideas are useful in understanding how spectatorship is imagined in the film The Silence of the Lambs. These characters
include Clarice Starling, who plays a complicated role both as a spectator
and also an object of the male gaze. Serial killer Buffalo Bill acts as a frightening ‘super-voyeur’ of sorts, his murderous spectatorship symbolized by
night-vision goggles. Even though the film shows an awareness of the male
gaze, it uses that awareness to challenge both the audience’s affinity for it,
and our notion of women as passive objects.
Standing in her boss Jack Crawford’s office, Clarice Starling displays qualities both of the voyeur and narcissist. She directs a powerful gaze at photographs of skinned women, victims of a killer she will soon try to apprehend.
Starling displays intense voyeuristic scopophilia, even though looking at the
skinned women is probably painful for her and in no way sexual. Starling’s
desire to see is shown many times over to be stronger than her fear. She tells
Hannibal Lecter, for example, that she looked at the screaming lambs which
woke her up, even though she was frightened then. The camera strengthens
the power of Starling’s gaze by focusing on its object, the pictures, letting us
share her perspective. Thus we, the audience, take the female perspective at
that point. Unlike one would expect under the ‘male gaze,’ this scene shows
a woman in a strong role of spectator, thus offering many desirable opportunities for the female viewers to identify with an active character.
But the filming of this scene contains factors which might remind us
of the male gaze. The camera focuses on Starling’s attractive female face,
and clearly she is made object of our gaze. The pictures on the wall are those
of women. Starling probably narcissistically identifies with the women in
those pictures, especially because she herself is constantly victimized by
men, albeit on a much lesser scale. A question is presented to us: will Starling end up like the women in those pictures? Tellingly, when the faces of
the women on the wall are shown, the camera cuts back to Starling’s face
and we find out that she is being watched by Crawford from a distance. This
camera work hints that Starling, like the women on the wall, is an object of
the male gaze.
In fact, Starling struggles throughout the film to escape the objectifying male gaze. She is looked at in a sexual way by the men who ride with
her in the elevator. Her fellow cadets at the FBI’s training program turn
around and check her out when she jogs by them. Dr. Chilton, also a figure
of law, looks at her in a sexual way. The police officers in West Virginia
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stare at Starling when she is alone in the room with them. Here, the camera
assumes Starling’s perspective here, circling around at all of the male faces.
This camera work subverts the conventions of the male gaze. We assume the
perspective of the object, gazing at the voyeurs. This shows us the pervasiveness of male voyeurism without putting the audience in the viewpoint of
those who objectify Starling. If Starling’s paramount challenge is to escape
being objectified the film’s climax occurs when Starling is caught in Buffalo Bill’s gaze. Her shooting of Buffalo Bill, while the audience is taking
his perspective, represents Starling fighting back against the structures of
cinema-like voyeurism which hound her.
Buffalo Bill is another character who has a strong relationship to spectatorship. He is sexually enigmatic to say the least, yet he is imagined as fully embracing structures of the male gaze. In fact, he takes those conventions
to lethal new heights. His goggles, which aid his spectatorship, symbolize
his role as a technologically-enhanced “super-voyeur.” His voyeurism also
replicates many patterns of the theater experience. He uses these goggles
when he is surrounded by darkness, for example hiding in the bushes or in
the pitch black of his basement. The color-filled moving images of his victims, whom he objectifies, appear to him like a movie appears to the audience of a film. He holds true to his role as a voyeur when he stalks Starling
in his basement. He is careful to keep distance between himself and Starling,
reaching out as if to touch her at one point, but quickly retracting his hand.
Touching her would shatter the necessary illusion of distance which is necessary for voyeurism. Tellingly, light from a window floods into his basement when he dies, destroying the theater-like conditions in which he terrorized his victims. Buffalo Bill is also visually cast as a super voyeur earlier,
when we see Catherine driving before her abduction. A pair of yellow lights
shines through her rear window, appearing to us like two ferocious eyes.
Buffalo Bill’s goal, the objectification of women, is made clear in other
ways as well. Senator Martin is called “smart” by the FBI agents who watch
her statement on TV because she repeatedly says her daughter’s name. One
agent comments that doing so might makes Catherine appear as a person,
and “not an object” so it will be “harder to tear her up.” Even the language
Bill uses incorporates his view of women as objects. He constantly refers to
Catherine as an object, saying “It rubs the lotion on its skin” and “It places
the lotion in the basket.” These statements show how Buffalo Bill objectifies
his victims to the point where they literally and figuratively cease to exist as
people.
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The film’s depiction of voyeurism and narcissism also carries implications for Law. The film makes explicit that understanding Buffalo’s motives is
a key component in catching him. The capacity to identify with Buffalo Bill
takes the form of “profiling” him, gaining useful insights into his psyche which
can be used to capture him. And the film connects narcissistic viewing with
making progress in the hunt for Buffalo Bill. For example, during Starling’s
and Lecter’s “quid-pro-quo” interactions, Starling’s ability to imagine Buffalo
Bill’s motives is directly liked with gathering her progress in apprehending
Buffalo Bill. Lecter directs Starling not to look at what Buffalo Bill does (“He
kills women”) but rather his motivations (“And how do we begin to covet?”)
This shift in perspective, from the pronoun “he” to “we,” symbolize the difference between types of spectatorship. The latter leads Starling to Belvedere,
Ohio where she eventually finds Buffalo Bill. The film therefore urges law to
ignore narcissistic spectatorship at its own peril. It is not a coincidence that
Law, which is represented as being filled with men who objectify Starling,
ends up lost in their search for Buffalo Bill.
III. A Question of Silence
Psychologist Jacques Lacan believed that women lie outside of the
“symbolic order” of law and communication. Similarly, the three women
standing trial in A Question of Silence confound the legal system both by
their actions and vocalizations, or lack thereof. The film depicts the violent
revolt of three women against a patriarchal society, as well as by a psychologist’s attempt to understand the motive, if any, behind the women’s brutal
crime. A Question of Silence reverses the conventions of the male gaze at
certain points, placing us in the perspective of women who objectify a man
before killing him. But the film also holds onto the male gaze, using it at
certain points to make us aware of its use against women.
Spectatorship plays a crucial and complex role in how murder takes
place in the film. Like the male gaze, the structures of spectatorship in this
scene give us an idea about who is active and passive. First, the film shows
extensive eye contact between the women when they surround and kill the
man, establishing the women as active spectators. The camera, during the
murder scene, alternatively makes eye contact with the women and watches
them, positioning us both as one of the female observers of the murder and
as one of the murderers themselves. The film thus makes us feel complicit
in the murder, biasing us toward sympathize with the three women. This
scene, in which women objectify a man, most clearly constitutes a reversal
Thoughts of Amherst
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of, but also a reflection of, the male gaze.
Visual and other techniques label the owner of the boutique as an object onto which the women project their hatred of patriarchy. His crime is
relatively minor compared with the other abuse the women have suffered,
showing that the man is not important in by himself. The man’s body hides
off screen while the women kill him, emphasizing the importance of the
women’s actions over the harm suffered by the man. The man is important
only in his relation to the women, thus he is a non-entity by himself, fitting
Claire Johnston’s characterization of roles traditionally occupied by women.
In fact, the film ignores the lives of all male characters and paints them as
flat, sexist, and ignorant of their own sexism. All of these techniques universalize the individual act of violence into a revolt against a generic objectified “man.”
The camera also sometimes assumes the male viewpoint, but only
with the purpose of showing the inherent flaws of the male gaze. These camera angles also tend to involve a male watching the female image by using
some sort of technological intermediary which distorts the female image.
We assume the perspective of male security workers at the prison who watch
Janine over a closed-circuit surveillance system in the prison, with a voice in
the background of the male whose perspective we are taking. The colorless,
blurry picture of the women on the screen questions the accuracy of male
spectatorship of women, especially in the context of the male-dominated
legal system. We also share the perspective of a man in his car who watches
Andrea, mistaking her for a prostitute, a mistake with which Andrea plays
along. The camera views Andrea through the distorted lens of the car’s rearview mirror. This rear-view angle we share symbolizes how an objectifying
male gaze distorts the intention of women. When the man’s sexual desire
is projected onto Andrea, she is transformed in his eyes from an ordinary
pedestrian into a prostitute. It is a similar distortion which places seemingly
ordinary women into the category of “clearly insane.”
The film also shows Janine visually linked to and confronted by the
women who murder the boutique owner. The very first scene in the movie
shows the Janine unbuttoning her husband’s shirt with a utensil while they
are making love. The motion she makes with the utensil is eerily reminiscent
of that of a woman stabbing her husband. Later, when her husband tells her,
“come to bed now,” Janine vividly imagines the boutique where the murder
takes place, as if she could imagine herself as one of the women in the store
at the time of the murder. She then imagines the women looking at her, one
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by one, with Janine continually averting her gaze. This sequence could have
several possible meanings. The image of the women staring at Janine one
by one places her in the position of being challenged by the women. The
women are accusing Janine of acting like a “male” up until that point by, for
example, treating Andrea insensitively by asking her about her sex life. The
stares could be a sign by the women that they refuse to be passive objects
of Janine’s investigation. The looks of the women could also be read as an
invitation to join their community of resistance against patriarchy. Janine’s
aversion of her eyes could represent her initial unwillingness to accept a
place the same community as the murderous women. In either case, spectatorship plays an important role outside of the murder scene as well.
In A Question of Silence, Law is confronted with the challenge of discovering motives, specifically those of the three women. It fails for at least
two reasons. First, most of the legal actors in the film are men, including
Janine’s husband, the prosecutor and the judge. When the legal system uses
the male gaze to view women, inevitably it will fail to see them clearly, the
film tells us. Additionally, the legal system is imagined as relying on false
assumptions. It refuses to acknowledge that the desire for revenge against
wrongs committed by an entire society, not just an individual, and thus refuses to see that gender played a role in the crime. Men could not possibly
face societal gender-based prejudice, so the male-dominated Legal system
fails to see how such a plight could exist. This film imagines a novel solution to the problem of male misunderstanding. Instead of trying to alter the
male gaze, the film imagines women assuming a gaze of their own to get
even with men. Even though the film never imagines it as a possibility, it is
clear that the male misunderstanding of women would not be as severe if
men tried to identify with women narcissistically instead of viewing them
voyeuristically.
IV. Conclusion
A central challenge posed to Law in both films is trying to understand
the motivation of those who break its rules. Law can only hope to attain
that understanding if it is able to engage in narcissistic spectatorship, which
would require identifying with what they look at. The two films represent
two different domains of law where this ability is useful; for policing, and
for classifying defendants during trial.
But differences exist in Law’s dilemma between the two films. First, the
magnitude of the misunderstandings differs greatly. Failing to grasp the reaThoughts of Amherst
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soning of a rogue murderer who lies on the fringes of society is almost to
be expected, and Starling’s intuition is imagined as an extraordinary trait.
But A Question of Silence shows Law’s inability to understand the motives
of three women whose experiences represent the entire class of women, including Janine. It is virtually impossible to rationalize away this oversight
on the part of Law.
The two films also present two different reasons for why Law should
understand people’s motivations accurately. These two rationales reflect the
distinction between the trial and policing. Law’s failure in A Question of
Silence is partly the inability to treat the women on trial as people, because
it refuses to acknowledge their grievances. But The Silence of the Lambs
focuses more on the harm caused to victims of crime when law cannot understand, or apprehend, a serial killer. These conflicting sympathies result
from the specific domains of law that each film deals with. During a trial we
worry about whether the defendant is being treated fairly. When a murder is
on the loose, we mostly worry about whom they will kill next.
Also, in both films psychologists act as someone who can understand
what Law cannot. This fact leaves open a distinct possibility – that Law could
avoid acting as a narcissist, but instead become a voyeur of the mind, and
still gain solutions to the challenges of misunderstanding discussed above.
The character of Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs, who is
shown to be a master of discerning others motivations, could be a model for
this type of spectatorship. He takes intense pleasure from viewing others’
mental landscapes, often without their willingness. Yet he is not entirely a
narcissist either. Not only does he look at Starling sexually, but he is unable
to look “turn his high-powered perception at himself,” as Starling observed.
The question of whether Lecter’s of ‘psychological voyeurism’ would solve
Law’s misunderstanding of others is an interesting issue, one that this paper
will leave unanswered.
Feel glad for Jay Buchman. He is finally a senior. An economics major, Jay
hails from Bethesda, MD and St. Albans high school. He sings in Concert Choir,
helps conduct the Madrigals, and once edited the Hamster. Jay’s dog Clifford
is blind and deaf, but Jay loves him anyway. Jay currently is researching for a
thesis on the empirical effect of victims’ rights laws, and he is applying to law
schools. He really enjoyed working at the Criminal Department of Justice last
summer, and he hopes to work as an appellate lawyer some day.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Performance of Working Memory
and Executive Function in
Obsessive Compulsive Patients
David Pechman ’08
For the first portion of this paper, we
were assigned to write a literature review
on a memory-related topic. Our literature
review was to conclude with a proposal
of a novel theoretical question and the
outlining of an experiment to investigate
this question. In the second portion of this
paper, we were to design our experiment
and discuss the predicted results.
O
bsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic
mental illness that affects
a substantial portion of the United
States population. The lifetime prevalence rate of obsessive compulsive
disorder in the United States is approximately two to three percent
(Karno, Golding, Sorenson, and Burnam, 1988). An individual affected
with this psychiatric condition experiences recurring and uncontrollable thoughts (obsessions). These
thoughts are often accompanied by
repetitive, ritualistic behavior (compulsions), which can be directly associated with or entirely unrelated to
the individual’s obsessive thoughts.
Concerns regarding germs
and filth, the possible occurrence of
tragic events, and the desire for symThoughts of Amherst
metry and order are common obsessions. Compulsive behavior ranges
from trivial habits to entirely incapacitating rituals, which become a
hindrance to normal life and can
alienate an obsessive compulsive individual from his family and friends.
Obsessive compulsive individuals
may be aware that their thoughts and
behaviors are irrational and unnecessary, but they are still unable to control their impulses. Their understanding of the disorder coupled with their
inability to control it causes anxiety
and distress. Obsessive compulsive
patients endure frustration, helplessness, and isolation.
In addition to anxiety and social isolation, OCD is associated with
memory deficits. Many studies have
documented a correlation between
OCD and spatial working memory
dysfunction, especially for more difficult tasks (van der Wee, Ramsey,
Jansma, Denys, van Megen, Westenberg, and Kahn, 2003). Van der Wee,
et al., (2003) investigated whether a
reduction in working memory capacity causes this phenomenon or if another impaired element of executive
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David Pechman - Performance of Working Memory
function is responsible. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to simultaneously observe performance of a task and neuronal activity. The task involved subjects looking at a screen on which four large dots
formed the corners of a diamond. Each of these dots represented a possible
location where a stimulus could appear. The stimulus in this experiment was
the change in color of one of the four dots on the screen. After viewing a
stimulus, subjects responded by pushing one of four buttons on a box that
were spatially representative of the dots on the screen. The task was administered in one of four levels of difficulty; subjects either responded directly
after the stimulus appeared or after a delay of one, two, or three stimuli.
All subjects committed more errors as the memory load (task difficulty) increased. OCD patients displayed impaired performance at high
levels of task difficulty relative to control subjects but displayed normal
performance at low levels of task difficulty. The OCD subjects displayed
elevated activity in the anterior cingulate relative to control subjects at all
load levels. OCD patients, however, displayed normal brain activity in the
other brain regions associated with working memory (dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortex), even as working memory performance worsened at
high load levels. This demonstrates that the working memory system did
not disengage when stressed. The neuropsychological data obtained by van
der Wee, et al., (2003) suggest that the capacity of working memory is not
affected in OCD patients. If OCD had reduced the working memory capacity of the subjects, then the working memory system would have failed to
activate at high load levels, relative to controls. The capacity for the storage
and implementation of memory is not impaired in OCD patients.
Van der Wee and his colleagues (2003) discussed two hypotheses suggested by previous studies (Carter, et al., 1999) as to the role of the anterior
cingulate. The first hypothesis proposes that the anterior cingulate contributes to an individual’s ability to implement a strategy. The second hypothesis postulates that this region allows an individual to monitor his own performance and evaluate his approach to a strategic task. OCD patients in
the van der Wee, et al., (2003) study did not display impaired performance
on high load level working memory tasks because of a reduced working
memory capacity; they displayed impaired performance because they were
unable to effectively implement their working memories through the use of
a strategy.
Researchers have found evidence that OCD patients struggle while
executing a strategic task. Savage, Baer, Keuthen, Brown, Rauch, and JenThoughts of Amherst
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ike (1999) demonstrated that OCD subjects displayed organizational difficulties. Subjects were given the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test. In this
task, participants copy a complex figure and draw the figure from memory
immediately and after thirty minutes. The researchers assessed the accuracy
of each reproduced figure and evaluated the organizational strategies of each
subject by grading each drawing on how many of the five major configurational elements were included (a quantitative organizational score). Configurational elements included a base rectangle (two points), two diagonal
lines (one point), a vertical midline (one point), a horizontal midline (one
point), and a vertex of a triangle (one point). Researchers also analyzed the
early organizational strategy of each subject by recording whether subjects
began constructing the figure by drawing a major configurational element
or a detail (a constituent other than the major configurational elements). If a
subject began with a detail, the researchers observed how many details the
subject drew before producing a configurational element.
Savage, et al., (1999) found that OCD patients performed poorly compared to control subjects on immediate recall and delayed recall for both accuracy scores and quantitative organizational scores. The poor immediate
recall performance of OCD patients reflects disorganization during copying and poor memory encoding of the figure. Seventy-five percent of OCD
subjects began construction with a detail rather than with a major configurational element; fifty percent of control subjects began construction with
a detail. By the third configurational unit constructed (a detail or a major
configurational element), however, only fifteen percent of control subjects
had not drawn a major configurational element. In contrast, by the third configurational unit constructed, sixty-five percent of OCD patients had drawn
only details. The data provides evidence that OCD patients implement less
systematic organization while copying the figure and remember less information about the figure after copying than do healthy control subjects due
to poor memory encoding. The OCD patients displayed difficulties focusing
on the details of the figures without appreciating the more basic structural
components. These subjects struggled to form a specialized adaptive strategy that would best enable them to remember the figure.
Many studies have compared the working memory function of OCD
patients and control subjects; researchers have used fMRI to localize brain
regions in which neuronal function differs between these two groups. I hope
to devise a study that will display that the working memory capacity of OCD
patients is intact and that working memory impairment can be corrected by
Thoughts of Amherst
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providing OCD patients with an effective encoding strategy. The study will
determine whether or not working memory impairment in OCD patients is
due to their inability to implement an effective strategy.
My study will consist of a single experiment, which will test working
memory function in OCD subjects versus control subjects when strategic
impairment is minimized or absent in the OCD subjects. Subjects will be
evaluated on their constructional accuracy on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex
Figure Test in the copy condition and in the immediate recall condition. Past
research has found that OCD subjects display poor organizational strategies
during the copy condition, leading to less effective encoding and impaired
performance on the immediate recall condition. Groups of OCD and control subjects in my experiment will be given explicit instructions describing
the strategy they should implement while copying the figure. I hypothesize
that providing both groups with the same effective copying strategy should
eliminate (or drastically reduce) the difference in working memory performance between OCD patients and control patients. If my hypothesis is correct, OCD patients should perform as well as control subjects on the immediate recall condition, providing evidence that although OCD patients suffer
from impaired strategic thought, their working memory is otherwise intact.
Methods
(Adapted from Savage, Baer, Keuthen, Brown, Rauch, and Jenike (1999))
Participants. Forty right-handed OCD subjects who each meet DSMIV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for OCD will be used
in this study. The subjects will be randomly selected from five separate hospital clinics (twelve subjects will be selected from each hospital). The OCD
patients, each of whom have not taken psychotropic medication for at least
one month, will each be given a standardized clinical interview (Spitzer, et
al., 1988) and evaluated by means of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Goodman, et al., 1989), Maudley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (Hodgson and Rachman, 1977), Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, et
al., 1961), and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck, et al., 1988). Patients will
be excluded from the study and replaced if they are experiencing depression or are found to be abusing controlled substances. Subjects will also be
excluded if they have suffered from a neurologic disorder, a head injury,
substance dependence, or have a history of psychosis.
Forty right-handed control subjects will be selected to match the OCD
subjects for gender, age, education, estimated intelligence, and handedness.
Thoughts of Amherst
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The control subjects will be randomly selected from areas surrounding the
five hospitals mentioned above (twelve subjects will be selected from each
area); a large pool of potential control subjects will be contacted initially to
ensure that a matching control is found for each OCD subject. Control subjects will be excluded from the study if they are taking psychoactive drugs
or have suffered from a psychiatric or neurologic disorder.
Stimuli. The Rey-Osterrieth Complex
Figure Test (RCFT) is a task implemented by
researchers to assess the spatial perception and
memory of subjects. Subjects will be shown a
complex figure (see Figure 1) and their ability
to accurately encode a visual memory of the
Figure 1 (Savage, et al., 1999)
figure will be assessed.
Procedure. Subjects will be divided into four groups: OCD uninstructed, control uninstructed, OCD instructed, and control instructed. All subjects will be told that they will copy a complex figure and then immediately
draw the image from memory. Subjects in the OCD instructed and control
instructed groups will be provided with a strategy they should use while
copying the RCFT figure and committing it to memory. These subjects will
be told to focus on five basic types of configurational elements as opposed
to more minor details: The configurational elements will be described as a
large rectangle, diagonal lines, a vertical midline, a horizontal midline, and
a large triangle sharing a border with the large rectangle.
After being informed they will copy a complex figure and immediately draw the image from memory, subjects in the OCD uninstructed and
control uninstructed groups will be given a “motivational” speech devoid
of information or instruction; these subjects will be told to “do a good job.”
Subjects will then be shown the RCFT figure and given five minutes to copy
it. After they have finished, they will immediately be asked to draw the figure from memory.
Predicted Results
The figures drawn in the immediate recall condition will be scored on
construction accuracy using the scoring system created by Denman in 1984.
The system was devised to score subjects on their construction of the figure
and not on their drawing ability. In this system, each of the 24 components
of the complex figure are identified and given a score based on its location,
line angles, line length, and line number. Each segment is composed of three
Thoughts of Amherst
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identified criteria. Each criterion present in the immediate recall drawing
is worth a point. Accuracy scores can range from 0 to 72.
I expect that my data from the OCD uninstructed and control uninstructed groups will replicate the findings of Savage, et al. (1999) showing that OCD subjects perform as well as control subjects on the copy
condition but perform significantly worse than do control subjects on
the immediate recall condition (see Figure 2) as assessed by the scoring
system created by Denman. Savage and his colleagues (1999) found that
the mean OCD subject score on the immediate recall condition was 35.70
(out of a possible 72) while the mean control subject score on the immediate recall condition was 46.50; I predict to obtain similar data to that of
Savage, et al. (1999)
In my experiment, I predict that the mean OCD instructed score
(see Figure 3) on the immediate recall condition and the mean control
instructed subject score (see Figure 4) on the immediate recall condition
will be similar (no significant difference); additionally, I expect both of
these scores to be higher than the mean control uninstructed subject score.
Since both subject groups will be provided with a strategy to effectively
encode a visual memory of the figure, subjects in both groups should
display improved performance over the OCD uninstructed and control
uninstructed subjects who did not receive any strategic assistance.
Discussion
The ability of subjects to successfully reproduce the complex figure is dependent on both their working memory capacity and their ability to implement a
strategy to best encode the image into their memories. If this study yields the expected results, it will display that working memory impairment in OCD patients
can be corrected by providing them with an effective strategy for the encoding
of memories. This finding will provide evidence that the working memory capacity of OCD patients is intact and that working memory impairment in OCD
patients is due to their inability to implement an effective strategy.
This study is part of the laboratory tradition. In creating the experiment,
I was guided by a theory: Working memory impairment in OCD patients is due
to their impaired ability to create adaptive, effective strategies. The RCFT does
not directly pertain to any real life scenario nor does it directly account for any
real life psychological phenomenon. A proponent of everyday approach would
critique my work by stating that an OCD subject’s difficulty in accurately reproducing the complex figure in the immediate recall task is unrelated to the primaThoughts of Amherst
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OCD and Control
Uninstructed
Note: Figures adapted
from Savage, et al. (1999)
Figure 2 - Expected mean OCD
and control uninstructed subject
accuracy score on RCFT
OCD Instructed
Control Instructed
Figure 3 - Expected mean OCD
instructed subject accuracy score
on RCFT
Figure 4 - Expected mean control
instructed subject accuracy score
on RCFT
Thoughts of Amherst
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Vol.1 - Fall 2006
ry deficit of OCD patients. However, this specific impairment of OCD subjects,
as observed in the laboratory, allows us to explore the nature of the disorder. I
expect this study would provide evidence that working memory impairment in
OCD patients is due to their inability to implement an effective strategy.
David Pechman is a junior neuroscience major from Scarsdale, New York. He
is fascinated by the biological and psychological aspects of the mind, especially
pertaining to cognition and memory. For the past 4 summers he has worked in the
Dementia Research laboratory at Burke Rehabilitation Hospital in White Plains,
New York studying the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. He hopes to attend medical school after college and become a physician. At Amherst, he has worked as
a teaching assistant for courses in biology, chemistry, and psychology and also
worked as a lab assistant for Professor Baird. For fun, he plays flanker for the
Amherst rugby team and guitar for “The Elements of Style,” a campus rock and
roll band.
References
American Psychiatric Association (1994): Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.
Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
Beck AT, Epstein N, Brown G, Steer RA (1988): An inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric
properties. J Consult Clin Psychol 56:893– 897.
Beck AT, Ward CH, Mendelson M, Mock J, Erbaugh J (1961): An inventory for measuring depression. Arch
Gen Psychiatry 4:561–571.
Carter, C.S., Botvinick, M.M., Cohen, J.D., 1999. The contribution of the anterior cingulate cortex to
executive processes in cognition. Rev. Neurosci. 10, 49–57.
Denman SB (1984): Denman Neuropsychology Memory Scale. Charleston, SC: S.B. Denman.
Goodman WK, Price LH, Rasmussen SA, et al (1989): The Yale-Brown obsessive-compulsive scale, I:
Development, use, and reliability. Arch Gen Psychiatry 46:1006 –1011.
Hodgson RJ, Rachman S (1977): Obsessional-compulsive complaints. Behav Res Ther 15:389 –395.
Karno, M., Golding, J.M., Sorenson, S.B., & Burnam, M.A. (1988). The epidemiology of obsessive
compulsive disorder in five US communities. Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol 45(12), 1094-1099.
Moritz, S., Kloss, M., Jacobsen, D., Kellner, M., Andresen, B., Fricke, S., Kerkhoff, G., Sieman, C., & Hand, I.
(2005). Extent, Profile, and Specificity of Visuospatial Impairment in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
(OCD). Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Vol 27 (7), 795-814.
Savage, C.R., Baer, L. Keuthen, N.J., Brown, H.D., Rauch, S.L., & Jenike, M.A. (1999). Organizational
Strategies Mediate Nonverbal Memory Impairment in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Biological
Psychiatry. Vol 45(7), 905-916.
Spitzer RL, Williams JBW, Gibbon M, First MB (1988): Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R–
Outpatient Version. New York: Biometrics Research Department.
van der Wee, N.J., Ramsey, N.F., Jansma, J.M., Denys, D.A., van Megen, H.J., Westenberg, H.M., & Kahn,
R.S. (2003). Spatial working memory deficits in obsessive compulsive disorder are associated with
excessive engagement of the medial frontal cortex. NeruoImage. Vol 20(4), 2271-2280.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Bad Hair Daze
Laurel Chen ’09
I took Printmaking II as a freshman. I’d never done printmaking before, and it was
intense. Lithography is pretty much impossible, I realized, as I slaved over grinding a massive stone that weighed half as much as I did. Subject matter in that class
was always open, though. I was staring out the window, thinking that the trees on
campus look a lot like broccoli. Or hair. I thought the tree-broccoli resemblance
was trite, so instead I drew palm trees on my giant stone and individualized them
with hairdos. The only thing I’d like to point out is that the most distant tree, in
its own little island, is actually a rebel with spiked hair, an earring, and prison
uniform stripes. I didn’t intend for it to come out looking more like a tree than any
of the others.
Laurel Chen is a sophomore from New York--not the city, and not upstate, but
from Westchester. She guesses she likes flowers and trees because she’s named
after a shrub. She also likes very short bios.
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An Austinian Reading of
Sophocles’ Antigone
Ryan Kao ’08
LJST 10: Intro to Legal Theory
Prof. Sitze
Spring 2006
A
casual reading of Sophocles’
Antigone
yields
two
opposing doctrines of law,
namely Antigone’s position of
divine law, and Creon’s position
of positive law. I contend that an
Austinian reading renders this
dialectical representation of Creon
and Antigone as a failure, and to
claim superiority of one doctrine
to another on a factual basis is to
beg the question. Antigone’s claim
is superior to Creon’s, for she
represents law properly so called,
and remains more true to law on its
own terms than Creon does. Creon,
the exemplary tyrant, in opposing
Antigone by forbidding the burial
of her brother, Polynices, fails to
successfully posit the law he claims
to embody.
After the defeat of Polynices
and the armies of Argos by Eteocles
and the armies of Thebes, both
brothers lay dead on the field, struck
down by each other. Creon, next in
line to inherit the throne, ordered
the honoring and burial of Eteocles,
and the desecration and exposing
of Polynices. Creon backs up this
command with the threat of death
by public stoning, yet Antigone
publicly defies him and confesses
Thoughts of Amherst
to doing so. In response, Creon
condemns Antigone to be buried
alive, but she takes her own life,
believing herself forsaken by the
gods she sought to champion. Creon
is punished by the gods, in turn, and
suffers the suicides of both his wife
and son.
Measuring the superiority of
either Antigone or Creon’s claim
in consequentialist terms neglects
the legal doctrines that underwrite
their arguments. In fact, the actual
consequences of their actions
are irrelevant to their logic. The
supremacy of one claim to the
other is best measured in light
of John Austin’s The Province of
Jurisprudence Determined.
Antigone’s claim concerns the
supremacy of divine law to mortal
positive law, and Creon’s inability
to create law that contradicts divine
law. She associates divine law with
the “Justice” that dwells “with the
gods beneath the earth,” implying
that there is a supreme, universal
Justice that cannot be surpassed by
a human judicial system that only
approximates it (i.e. that of Creon).
Austin considers divine law
as laws or rules properly so called.
Divine laws create religious duties
and enforce them with religious
sanctions, as distinguished from the
duties and sanctions of human law.
Violations of religious duties are
sins, and result in the deployment
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Ryan Kao - An Austinian Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone
of “evils, or pains, which we may suffer here or hereafter, by the
immediate appointment of God, and as consequences of breaking his
commandments.”1 The primary difference between divine law and human
law, then, is agency.
Divine law may be revealed or unrevealed, where revealed law
consists of express commands “uttered by God directly, or by servants
whom he sends to announce them,” and unrevealed law consists of laws
“set by God to his human creatures, but not through the medium of human
language, or not expressly.”2 In the case of Antigone, the divine law that
commands the burial of Polynices is revealed through the prophet Tiresias,
who advises Creon that the gods revealed to him their displeasure at
Creon’s refusal to “honor the traitor just as much as [Eteocles],” and that
Creon should recognize Antigone’s claim that “Death longs for the same
rites for all.”3
For Austin, these revealed laws are “binding upon us, in so far as
the revealed law has left our duties undetermined,” and as such, we need
to look for duties that are imposed by unrevealed law.4 We can understand
these duties by the reflection of the benevolence of God and the general
principle of utility in the tendencies of our actions. God is inherently
benevolent, and acts with the happiness of all sentient creatures in
mind, and enjoins human actions that promote this purpose. “Therefore
by knowing the tendencies of our actions, and knowing his benevolent
purpose, we know his tacit commands.”5
It is important to note that Austin’s concept of God does not fit
neatly over Sophocles’ concept of god, in so far that the Olympic gods
are not singular, nor are they necessarily benevolent. The relationship
between the Olympic gods and mortals is one of player to pawn, and the
Olympic gods often involve themselves directly in the lives of mortals.
Consequently, when Austin contradistinguishes positive law from divine
law,6 the difference between Austin’s God and Sophocles’ gods poses
something of a quandary, as the Olympic gods rule by whim, and could
be considered sovereigns in the Austinian sense. The Olympic gods could
even be considered superhuman tyrants, while Creon is a mortal tyrant.
Antigone’s divine law, then, is the will of the gods, which she
associates with the “great unwritten, unshakable traditions…alive, not
just today or yesterday: they live forever, from the first of time, and no
one knows when they first saw the light.”7 This historical approach views
custom as originating from divine law, and thereby avoids the potential
1 Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, 38.
3 Fagles, The Three Theban Plays, 85.
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problem of being classified as Austinian positive morality, which is law
improperly so called. Traditions that derive their status as law merely on
the basis of their status as tradition, or traditions that emerge through rules
posited by the majority, are positive morality, although such rules may be
enforced by considerable sanctions. Antigone’s claim avoids this trap by
identifying customs as derivatives of laws posited by the gods themselves,
who are sovereign, insofar as they are habitually obeyed, they expressly
intimate their desires (i.e. they express commands) through general rules
meant to apply to a class of actions, and enforce these rules with religious
sanctions, which are often deployed directly by the gods or their agents.
Tiresias tells Creon that Creon will be punished for disobeying the gods,
and that Creon’s punishment is “violence…forced upon the heavens. And
so the avengers, the dark destroyers of late but true to the mark, now lie
in wait for you, the Furies sent by the gods and the god of death to strike
you down with the pains you perfected!”8
The obscured origins of the laws lend to their legitimacy as divine
law, for there is no known human-posited origin, and must consequently
be posited by the gods. Furthermore, the historical obedience of the people
and past sovereigns indicates tacit approval of the law. This position
generates two important questions—the question of obligation and the
question of sovereignty.
The Austinian sovereign cannot be habitually obedient to any other
man, and must issue commands that are habitually obeyed by subjects. In
terms of commands, the sovereign occupies the position of the superior,
while the subject occupies the position of the inferior. The sovereign is
able to enforce his commands with the threat of sanction, and as a result,
is able to generate duty on the part of the subject.
Creon is sovereign of Thebes and he is not subject to the commands
of any other man. Consequently, his commands must be obeyed by all
Thebans, including Antigone. As sovereign, he is the origin of law, and
adopts a legal positivist stance of law as command to oppose Antigone’s
claim to divine law. However, Creon does not actually invoke law in his
decision to defile Polynices, for in order for Austinian commands to be
considered rules or laws, they must be general and affect a general class
of actions.9 Creon’s command to expose Polynices’ body is a specific
command affecting only one instance of action.
Thus, Creon’s command makes no appeal to law, nor does it posit
any new law. In truth, Creon makes a claim to positive morality as a
rule improperly so called. Creon’s argument is premised on the law of
honor, a rule posited by the majority and enforced by sanction deployed
by the collective whole against the offending member. Creon’s claim can
be summed up by his declaration, “never the same for the patriot and the
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traitor.”10 Nevertheless, Creon’s command still obliges Antigone to obey,
because Creon possesses the ability to inflict evils upon her should she
disobey. She disobeys, and is promptly sentenced to death, but dies being
more true to law than Creon.
Creon also suffers sanctions for disobeying a command, namely
the death of his wife and son because of his disobedience to divine law.
Creon himself is subject to the sovereign commands of the Olympian gods.
The gods expressly intimate their desires through Tiresias, and threaten
religious sanction to reinforce them. Furthermore, these commands
are habitually obeyed by all mortals, making all mortals subject to the
sovereign gods. It follows that if the gods can command mortals and hold
the threat of sanction over mortals, then gods can obligate mortals to obey
their laws.
Creon, then, is subject to the Olympian gods and their commands.
Yet, Creon is also sovereign to the Theban citizens, and his being subject to
the gods does not compromise his position as sovereign of Thebes insofar
as Creon is not subject to any other man. Creon’s position as sovereign is
compromised when one of his subjects is capable of offering a sanctionbacked command and thereby obligate Creon, functionally reversing the
sovereign-to-subject relationship. Thus, Antigone does not circumvent her
obligation to obey Creon’s command by invoking divine law, and in fact
confirms Creon’s command as an origin of duty by admitting to disobeying
it, and then accepting the punishment promised. Antigone acknowledges
Creon’s command as having the power to obligate her to obey, yet denies
its ability to override divine law. Haemon, too, subordinates Creon to the
Olympic gods, and asks, “Protect your rights? When you trample down the
honors of the gods?”11 In summation, Haemon argues that Creon cannot
champion positive law that contradicts divine law. All mortals are bound
by divine law, but Thebans are additionally bound by the positive law of
the city.
For Austin, the principle of utility marks the point of demarcation
between resistance and obedience to the sovereign. The basis for
obedience is the utility of government, where “if the protection which it
yields be too costly, or if it vex us with needless restraints and load us
with needless exactions, the principle which points at submission as our
general duty may counsel and justify resistance.”12 Disobedience to an
established government is always an evil, for the evils inflicted by a bad
government never exceed the evils suffered under anarchy, but resistance
may nevertheless be warranted if it can achieve good government. The
good achieved must outweigh the evils of resistance.
Antigone’s resistance is not grounded on Creon’s continued abuse
of the people, for he does not violate the general principle of utility;
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for the most part, his rulings are for the greater good of the people, or
are at least not contrary to it, and the cost of instigating the evils that
accompany rebellion would not outweigh the benefit of deposing him.
However, Antigone’s situation is not one of resistance against a systemic
violation of the principle of utility, but is merely resistance to a specific
command that violates the principle of utility.
Sovereign use of sanction is along the same lines as subject use of
rebellion, insofar as sovereigns deploy force when it is for the greater good
of the people; evil can be used to achieve good. Consequently, Creon’s use
of force to enforce his decree forbidding the burial of Polynices assumes
the general principle of utility, yet this assumption is not validated when it
is evaluated. There is no benefit to issuing the command, as the state will
not receive any immediate benefit from Polynices’ defilement. Polynices
is dead and the armies of Argos routed—no further harm can come from
Polynices, nor can any restorative benefit be derived from leaving his
body exposed, as opposed to burying his body. Furthermore, the state does
not compromise its legitimacy, nor does it contradict any of its principles
by burying Polynices. Creon’s command, being specific and occasional,
does not posit or appeal to any law, and is in fact premised on positive
morality.
Therefore, there is no benefit derived from Creon’s command, only
harm directed toward Antigone (and also Ismene), and could even said
to be the product of Creon’s vindictive malice. Tiresias tells Creon to
“never stab the fighter when he’s down. Where’s the glory, killing the
dead twice over?”13 Clearly, Creon’s decision is premised on the law of
honor, and is further weakened by the imprecise definitions of morality
that are inherent in positive morality as law improperly so called. On one
hand, Creon could be satisfying the law of honor by honoring the patriot
and dishonoring the traitor, yet by dishonoring the traitor, he can violate
the law of honor by further injuring a defeated opponent.
Antigone’s claim to divine law as a critique of Creon’s command
is valid, as she is more true to law than Creon, whose claim fails not only
to represent law, but also fails to demonstrate that his command was in
accordance with the principle of utility. Thus, Antigone’s claim to law is
superior to Creon’s claim to law, as Creon’s claim is invalid.
Thoughts of Amherst
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Anti-Slavery Men: The Anti-Slavery
Societies at Amherst College
Jake Maguire ’07
Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. After much debate and discussion, they
adopted a constitution with the stated
mission of endeavoring “by all means
sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion to effect the abolition of slavery in
the United States; to improve the character and condition of the free people
of colour, to inform and correct public
opinion in relation to their situation and
rights, and obtain for them equal civil
and political rights, and privileges with
the whites.”1 Within a year, tensions
had mounted between the society and
the faculty, and in early February of
1835, it was regretfully dissolved by a
formal vote of its members who decided they could not, in good conscience,
meet under the restrictions which the
faculty had placed upon them. Two
and a half years later, another group of
students petitioned the faculty for the
right to start the Amherst College AntiSlavery Society. After the institution’s
forceful response to the first group, this
aim seemed unlikely, but college records show that in November of 1837,
their request was “cheerfully granted”
n mid-July of 1833, 77 of the 239 by a vote of the faculty.2
young men studying at Amherst
“Preamble”. Constitution of the Amherst
College gathered themselves in 1Auxiliary
Anti-Slavery Society. 1833.
formal assembly to create the Amherst 2 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery
“Anti-Slavery Men” came out of Professor Moss’s class on African American history from slavery to the Civil
War. Our task this time was to explore
anything from the course’s specified
timeframe in a 7-9 page paper. We
were also asked to incorporate primary source material into our work.
After digging in the archives for a
while, I finally decided to work with
the recorded minutes of the two antislavery societies that formed at Amherst in the early 1800s. Curiously,
the first was disbanded by the president of the college through a faculty
vote while the second, which formed
just a few years later, was enthusiastically supported by the same administration. Obviously, I had a research
question, and the result was a pagelimit exceeding exploration of why in
the world this all happened. The title
of the paper, “Anti-Slavery Men,”
came from the inspiring, final entry
of the first society upon its forced disbanding. “Whereas we are no longer
‘AntiSlavery Brethren’ Resolved, that
we are & WILL BE FOREVER ANTI
SLAVERY MEN.” The minutes end
there, and with them, the history. Still,
everything is there in the archives.
Here’s hoping that interested readers
will have a look.
I
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Jake Maguire - Anti-Slavery Men
This apparent double-take by the Amherst faculty, neither the composition nor presidency of which changed between 1833 and 1837, poses
problems for the inquisitive historian. In 1835, then President Heman
Humphrey wrote the first group of students that “[their] own best good,
& the permanent interests of the institution would be promoted by the
voluntary disbanding of the Society.”3 And yet, less than three years later, holding the same office, Humphrey presided over the formation of a
new society motivated by the same goals. This turnaround begs the natural question of what changed. Did the faculty experience an ideological
shift? Did the society itself change qualitatively in its resurrection? In actuality, a little of each of these things was at play in 1837, and especially
afterwards as the second society outlasted the first. Heavily influenced by
the rising tide of the Second Great Awakening, the second society seems
to have been exceedingly religiously oriented and far less threatening
than the first in language and in action. Still, this alone would not have
been enough to warrant its positive reception. The face of anti-slavery
was also changing. What had begun in 1831 as violent abolitionism (i.e.
Nat Turner) had transformed by 1835 into a definitive tide of violence in
response to abolition. By 1837, it was the abolitionist and not the slaveholder that the North viewed as a victim. Additionally, with a growing
number of female activists, the composition of the movement itself may
have contributed to this perception, undoubtedly shifting the sympathies
of those in power at Amherst. Finally, these things certainly contributed
to a genuine change of heart, at least in some of the college’s influential
administrators. President Humphrey, in particular, seems to have changed
his mind to some degree as the 1830’s wore on.4 Let us begin, then, by
placing him and the college in the context of this time.
In 1831, Nat Turner kicked off the decade with a bang, setting the
stage for a pivotal turning point in the opposition to slavery. Assembling
a small army of slaves Turner marched through Southampton, Virginia in
full rebellion, killing close to 60 whites until his rebellion was finally put
down. Two months later, whites captured Turner and executed him at the
gallows.
Despite happening in Virginia, the chilling story echoed throughout
the whole nation. Turner’s rebellion marked the first time that long held
Society, Nov. 18, 1837.
3 Humphrey, Heman. Letter to Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 26 November 1834. Amherst
College Archives and Special Collections. Robert Frost Memorial Lib., Amherst.
4 Anonymous. “Anti-Slavery in Amherst College.” Liberator 30 Oct. 1840: 10.
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fears of mass slave uprising had materialized. Some called for increased
controls and restrictions on slaves as paranoid vigilante mobs killed hundreds of innocent blacks. Still, others, clearly shaken by the recent bloodshed on both sides, claimed the moment as a warning to end slavery and
avoid what they now viewed as an imminent uprising. These were not
just northern abolitionists, many of who had not yet organized, but also
southern legislators. Even in Turner’s Virginia, prominent representatives
called for emancipation on the grounds that continued slavery placed the
entire region at risk.5 Both sides used the fear which Turner had engendered to enhance their respective arguments.
In January of the same year, preceding Turner’s rebellion by seven
months, Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison launched his anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator. Writing boldly in support of emancipation, Garrison
quickly became a face of anti-slavery in the United States, eventually helping to found the American Anti-Slavery Society, to which the 1833 society at
Amherst was auxiliary. Despite a growing following, Garrison’s convictions,
which also included pacifism, temperance and women’s suffrage, led to an
increased discomfort among northerners and southerners alike surrounding
emancipation. Combined with the fear generated by Nat Turner’s rebellion,
Garrison’s firebrand abolitionism and vehement opposition to colonization
helped cast anti-slavery as a movement to be quelled. Thus, while the Southampton episode had initially sparked a wave of violence against free blacks
in the North, many fearful whites now also enacted violence against white
advocates of anti-slavery. In 1834, anti-abolition riots spattered Connecticut,
adding to a growing controversy surrounding the movement. Particularly in
New England, there existed a prevalent notion that all critical discourse on
slavery was subject to violent aggression.6
It was in the context of a growing anti-slavery movement, then, that
several Amherst students formed the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society,
but it was in the parallel and equally expanding context of anti-abolitionist
violence that Heman Humphrey and his faculty earnestly pleaded with the
society to disband. Amherst was, after all, not far from Connecticut, and although the college had never known slavery in Massachusetts, the threat of
violence against advocates of change felt unquestionably real and threatening,
especially to such a young, uncertain institution. In his 1834 correspondence
with the members of the early society, Humphrey expressed such fears, writ5 Clarke, James Freeman. Anti-Slavery Days. (New York: Worthington) 20.
6 Clarke, 22.
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ing, “we cannot excuse ourselves from the duty of disbanding [the society],
if at any future time, we shall find its longer existence, in any way decidedly hostile to the great interests of the seminary, which is committed to our
care.”7 Once again, Humphrey alludes to growing violence in the letter which
officially terminated the society, saying, “We fully accord with the opinion
recently expressed by the whole body of students in the Andover Theological
Seminary, that in the present agitated state of the public mind, it is inexpedient to keep up any organization, under the name Anti-Slavery, Colonization,
or the like, in our Literary and Theological Institutions.”8
For all its forthright insistence that the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society disband (“As you cannot comply, you must cease to exist, as
the Colonization Society has done already.”9), we must not assume that the
Amherst faculty felt opposed to the society’s stated goals. A simple order
to disband fails deceptively to indicate a sympathy for the institution of
slavery. No, we must not perceive discomfort with the particular society
as an opposition to emancipation on the part of the institution. Instead, we
must read this attitude through the eyes of a fledgling academic establishment and its concern for its own survival and the safety of its members.
Herein lies the key to the mysterious turnaround of 1837.
As it turns out, Amherst College did not harbor a particular aversion
to the cause of anti-slavery in the early 1830’s. Undoubtedly, individuals
existed at the college whose sympathies fell against the movement, but in
larger terms, these individuals do not appear to have controlled the policy
surrounding the 1833 society. In an 1840 edition of Garrison’s Liberator,
one writer reveals the following:
“An agent from the Colonization Society, not long since, delivered
a lecture in the village of Amherst. His audience numbered thirty persons,
including (of course) some abolitionists. Neither the President, nor any of
the Professors of the college, encouraged him by their presence, and very
few of the students, though two years before, on a similar occasion, Pres.
Humphrey attended, and gave the lecturer $10.”10
Thus, at the very least, President Humphrey, the chief advocator
of the 1833 disbandment, believed in the end of slavery, even if, as a
7 Humphrey, Heman. Letter to Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 26 November 1834. Amherst
8 Humphrey, Heman. Letter to Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 17 February 1835. Amherst
9 Humphrey, Heman. Letter to Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 17 February 1835. Amherst
10 Anonymous. “Anti-Slavery in Amherst College.” Liberator 30 Oct. 1840: 10.
Thoughts of Amherst
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colonizationist for a time, his specific views remained incongruous with
those of the members of the Anti-Slavery Society. It was not, then, a
disagreement with the goals of the society which led to its initial dissolution, but more likely a concern that the society, which proved particularly
radical in comparison to its 1837 descendent, should pose a threat to the
wellbeing of the college itself at the hands of anti-abolitionist vandals.
Turning to the second society, we may notice a marked difference in the
saliency of such a possibility for two reasons. First, anti-abolitionist
violence grew increasingly brutal in the period following the disbandment of the first and preceding the formation of the second anti-slavery
society at Amherst. In 1834, even as President Humphrey wrote in favor
of disbandment, a white mob attacked the home of Prudence Crandall, a
Connecticut school teacher who had opened a school for black girls. Not
long before this, another mob in South Carolina rioted against and set
fire to the Ursine Convent in Charleston. It marked the first time in US
history that a convent had been burned. Finally, in 1835, America experienced the most intense trend of anti-abolitionist violence that it would
see before the Civil War. The year did not end without seeing a riot in
Hartford last three days, an integrated school in New Hampshire dragged
into a swamp by 80 yoke of oxen, and another attack on a black school in
Norwich, CT. Perhaps the most significant moment in the career of antiabolitionist violence came when a mob of rioters interrupted a meeting of
the Female Anti-Slavery Society in Boston.11
Indeed, this incident is significant for many reasons, not the least of
which is the participation of women, who began in 1835 to petition congress
in large numbers for the abolition of slavery.12 As the prevalence of this campaign grew, American women began increasingly to view anti-slavery as the
historical avenue through which they would assert their natural rights as full
citizens. To be sure, this startled some in the 1830s. Still, the public was not
entirely averse to the exercise of female petition because, unlike the right to
vote, the right to petition was understood as a right which women possessed.
Thus, most deemed it a generally reasonable way for women to involve themselves in the debate on slavery.13
Still, important as it may seem, the participation of women in the abolitionist movement becomes infinitely more significant in light of the violent,
11 Moss, Hilary. “Class Handout”. Anti-Abolitionist and Anti-Black Violence, 1831-1835.
12 Zaeske, Susan. Signatures of Citizenship. (North Carolina: Chapel Hill) 2.
13 Zaeske, 3.
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public persecution which the movement endured. After disrupting the meeting
of Boston’s anti-slavery women, the rowdy mob of 1835 seized William Lloyd
Garrison, who was not surprisingly present, and, fastening a rope around his
neck, proceeded to drag him through the streets of Boston, almost to the point
of death.14 Typical of the mid-1830s, mobs intended this kind of violence as
a means of humiliating and intimidating those involved in the abolitionist
movement. Ironically however, this public display of aggression and brutality often had much the opposite effect, galvanizing sympathy and support for
abolitionists from those who had yet to find themselves convicted one way or
the other.
The addition of women no doubt intensified this effect drastically, as
women were already imagined as weak and defenseless and more importantly,
innocent and good. The 1833 society itself demonstrates this view, resolving in July of 1833 to express “our indignation and abhorrence of the barbarous treatment of Miss Crandall and our sympathy for her sufferings in her
heavenly enterprise of instructing the ignorant and oppressed.”15 Here, use
of the terms “barbarous” and abhorrent to describe rioters contrast with the
“heavenly” distinction bestowed on Crandall herself, conflating female purity
and tenderness with the values of abolitionism itself. While some women,
like Crandall, suffered violence directly, most did not. Still, by attaching their
names (literally) to the same cause for which so many white men were aggressively attacked, women bolstered the image of the besieged movement,
lending it a certain public sympathy on account of their perceived purity and
decency, even as many were uncomfortable with their political involvement.
Thus, while increased anti-abolitionist violence could certainly not
have assuaged the fears of Amherst’s faculty members between 1835 and
1837, it is quite plausible that the targeted victimization of the abolitionist
movement heightened their sympathies for anti-slavery principles which,
if their leader is typical, many of them already appreciated on some level.
This produced in them a new determinedness toward the cause of abolition and rendered them more likely to allow a society dedicated to such a
goal, provided it fit consistently with the emotional and moral tenets on
which their own abolitionism rested. Fortunately, the Amherst College
Anti-Slavery Society fit this bill.
Proffering a palatable blend of sincere religiosity and soft-edged intellectualism, the society which formed in 1837 proved far less threatening
14 Moss, Hilary. “Class Handout”. Anti-Abolitionist and Anti-Black Violence, 1831-1835.
15 Minutes of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society, July 24, 1833.
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than its 1833 counterpart. Sharing no members with that society and crafting a constitution entirely independent of its predecessor’s, the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society (ACASS) employed generally duller language and
functioned in an ivory tower, formulating resolution after academic resolution
while rarely leaving the confines of the aptly named Theological Room.
Comparisons between the minutes of the first society and those of the
ACASS reveal these distinctions all too well. The 1833 constitution reads
like a revolutionary manifesto. “We believe the citizens of New England not
only have the right to protest against [slavery], but are also under the highest
obligation to seek its removal by moral influence; and whereas we believe the
free people of colour are unrighteiously (sic) oppressed….”16 Later, in Article
2, the members continued, “to endeavor by all means sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion to effect the abolition of slavery in the United States; to
improve the character and condition of the free people of colour, to inform
and correct public opinion in relation to their situation and rights, and obtain
for them equal civil and political rights, and privileges with the whites.”17 As
though this phrasing were not incendiary enough, the society later amended
Article 2 to read, “to effect the emancipation of the whole coloured race within the United States- the emancipation of the slave from the oppression of the
Master- the emancipation of the free coloured man from the oppression of
publick (sic) sentiment; and the elevation of both to an intellectual, moral and
political equality with the whites.”18 In contrast to this definitive language,
aggressive and potentially inviting of violence, the constitution of the ACASS
reads more quietly. While certainly advocating the end of slavery, it couches
this goal with the first stated objective of “collect[ing] and diffus[ing] information on the subject of slavery,” and the far calmer hope of “remov[ing] the
prejudice existing against the free people of color in relation to their condition
and rights, and advance[ing] in all proper ways their intellectual, moral and
religious improvement.”19
On the issue of colonization, the ACASS entertained a debate among
its members on the question, “Can an abolitionist consistently belong to
a colonization society?”20 Comparatively, the society of 1833 formally
resolved in open session “that it is wrong to offer expatriation any portion of the community. 2. that it is wrong to remove the African because
16 “Preamble”. Constitution of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 1833.
17 “Preamble”. Constitution of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society. 1833. (italics mine)
18 Minutes of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society, Nov. 24, 1834.
19 “Article 2”. Constitution of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society. 1837.
20 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society, Aug 10, 1838
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it have countenance & sanction to the unholy prejudice against them.
3. because the removal of a part weakens the influence of the whole.”21
Whether we take “the whole” to mean America, in which case the society makes a bold assertion indeed, or worse yet, all black Americans, in
which case it makes a statement that is quite literally revolutionary in
character, we can clearly discern from such comparisons that the ACASS
offered a mellowed and much more palatable version of its 1833 predecessor. Furthermore, while both societies expressly disavowed violence,
the society of 1833 employed rhetoric quite more likely to provoke it. We
can gain insight into the origin of this and other differences by examining
the religious context of the 1830s.
While Garrison published the Liberator and Nat Turner led his rebellion in Southampton, a religious revolution grew rapidly in the North.
The Second Great Awakening, underway since the late 1820s, saw the
rise of charismatic traveling preachers and hundreds of thousands of
Christian converts. Advancing the newly minted belief that salvation
was not predetermined but rather based on an individually effected relationship with God, these preachers and their followers acted on the notion that the Gospel applied to social reform. As such, they inspired followers to seek social justice as a way to hasten the coming of Christ. In
1833, the founders of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society stood
at the peak of this revival. Their rhetoric, while religious in nature, more
deeply reflects the fervor and passion of the leaders they witnessed. Garrison, for example, a Christian to the point of despising the Constitution,
wrote famously on the front page of the Liberator’s first issue, “I do not
wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation…. I am in earnest—I
will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—
AND I WILL BE HEARD.”22 Rooted in the belief that the Gospel could
radically change societies the way it changed individuals, this kind of
unyielding commitment to abolitionism proved typical of early 1830s
converts.23
Still, by the late 1830’s, having run its course for over a decade,
the Second Great Awakening was slowing down. As anti-abolitionist violence rose and the novelty of revival wore off, the strong tie between
religious sincerity and radical social reform also began to fade. Slowly,
21 Minutes of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society, Dec. 11, 1833. (italics mine)
22 William Lloyd Garrison. “To the Public.” Liberator 1 Jan. 1831: 1.
23 Blight, David. David Blight on William Lloyd Garrison. 1998. PBS. November 17, 2005
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i2980.html>.
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<http://
one could once again be religious without enacting Garrisonian zealotry.
The students at Amherst in 1837, no doubt affected deeply by the revivals
earlier in the decade, thus walked a middle road, passionately committing
themselves to the ideals of abolition, but not necessarily compelled to
the incendiary rhetoric typical of those who came before them. In some
ways, they maintained the individualism of the Second Great Awakening,
placing heavy emphasis on their personal beliefs. Still, in other ways, the
battle stopped with the state of their minds. Regardless of actual abolitionist behavior, these students appear to have been most satisfied when
arriving at correct beliefs and hence were generally inactive.
As must have been comforting to the faculty, their society proved
largely deliberative. Most meetings consisted of prayer, prepared remarks
on a specific topic and subsequent, internal discussion. Each meeting, the
body ultimately arrived at a collective position on the particular subject in
question. For example, on July 13, 1838, the members discussed the question of whether or not slaveholders should receive compensation upon the
liberation of their slaves. After several rounds of “interesting” debate, the
society voted in the negative and, satisfied with its progress, adjourned accordingly.24 This kind of society hardly threatened the “great interests of
the seminary” about which Humphrey had worried four years prior. In fact,
apart from attendance at a few conventions, the society seems to have done
little outside the walls of its precious Theological Room.
Still, the religion of those involved was highly genuine, often to
the detriment of actual abolitionist discussion. Frequently, the society
postponed its planned debate and opted to use its allotted time in collective prayer. Products of a waning revival, members justified this as the
ultimate tool for the hastening of general emancipation.25 Additionally,
reflecting this waning social involvement, the society endorsed a resolution upon the death of its president in October of 1839, directly appropriating Pauline language both to elegize and to venerate. “We yet rejoice
in the firm belief, that to die was for him unspeakable gain; and that the
great cause of Freedom is still near to the heart of Jesus, our Master, who
will raise up others to supply the places of those, whom he culls from his
vineyard on earth….”26 Here again, the religion of the ACASS manifests
passively. The resolution does not explore the idea, for example, that the
24 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society, July 13, 1838.
25 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society, April 19, 1838.
26 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society, Oct. 25, 1839.
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society’s members might be those whom Christ has chosen to “supply the
place” of the dead veteran. In a dated departure from the likes of Garrison
and Charles Finney, the society’s members resign themselves to God’s
prerogative, rather than actively taking up the mantle of the deceased.
With final regard to the approach of this society itself, it speaks volumes
about the commitment of its members that by 1840, the frequency of its meetings had decreased from twice a month to roughly twice a year. Furthermore,
deciding to hold an all-college meeting on November 15, 1841, the society
put to discussion the question of whether or not the present organization of the
Liberty Party was “expedient.” In an interesting occurrence, the student body
voted to affirm the party, the centerpiece of which was anti-slavery. Upon
witnessing this vote, the secretary of the society recorded in the society’s final minutes that the decision had been given, “not by the society, but by the
meeting, in favor of the affirmative. This we record as a decided triumph of
abolition over slavocracy in this institution.”27 Thus, the society abandoned
the completion of the goals initially stated in its constitution, trumpeting the
questionable support of the student body as a final and ultimate victory. Such
a philosophy hardly characterizes the society of 1833, committed to emancipating the slave “from the oppression of the Master,” and further aids us in
understanding why the college permitted the second society but disbanded the
first. In short, the ACASS lacked radical sentiment altogether.
Finally, we must consider the ideological state of the faculty between
1834 and 1837. Our only clue to this puzzle remains the letter written to Garrison’s Liberator in October of 1840. From it, we can discern that President
Humphrey, once a financial supporter of colonization, experienced a shift
toward full scale abolitionism in the time described. This not only implies
his personal views regarding anti-slavery, but also his corresponding level of
commitment. Based on this letter, we can assume that Humphrey’s commitment to emancipation intensified over the course of the 1830s. Whether this
was largely the result of a religious stirring, a sympathy with the plight of
aggressed abolitionists or something else, we cannot know. Still, we can say
confidently that the request of several students to form the ACASS fell on
markedly more sympathetic ears than the appeals of the Auxiliary Society a
few years before.
Definitively then, we may attribute the bizarre faculty turnaround at
Amherst between 1833 and 1837 to a number of factors, each of which played
a reasonable role in the request to form the ACASS being “cheerfully grant27 Minutes of the Amherst College Anti-Slavery Society, Nov. 15, 1841.
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ed.” First and foremost, the students bore a lightened burden of persuasion as
the faculty, led by President Humphrey, already sympathized with the cause of
emancipation. Moreover, the abolition movement, aided by the participation
of women, gained great sympathy through its victimization at the hands of
anti-abolition rioters and mobs. As the Second Great Awakening slowly faded
into the American landscape, the ACASS mounted an organization both more
religious and less threatening than that of 1833, catering to the concerns of a
president whose opinions regarding abolition had intensified favorably over
the years. In the end, these things allowed for the formation of a weak and
relatively inconsequential society in 1837. As the pressure to translate faith
into action waned in the late 1830s and early 1840s, so too waned the resolve
of the ACASS until in 1841 its membership settled for a simple, false victory
and finally fizzled out. Behind them, they left a book of minutes, several periodical write-ups and a disappointing legacy, especially when compared to that
of their predecessors, who, on February 23, 1835, having received instruction
from President Humphrey that they must disband, unanimously passed the
following resolution in an effort to immortalize their dream:
“Whereas we are no longer “AntiSlavery Brethren” Resolved, that we
are & WILL BE FOREVER ANTI SLAVERY MEN.
The ex-president then saidBrethren, WE ARE NO MORE!!!”28
Jake Maguire is a native of Attleboro, Massachusetts. At Amherst, he has been an
active participant in the Amherst Christian Fellowship, Route 9, and the Multifaith Council. He also RC’s and serves up tasty treats at Schwemm’s. As a double
major in Black Studies and American Studies, he’s spent most of his academic
time studying race and ethnicity in the US and has devoted considerable time to
race and politics, especially the Civil Rights Movement. After graduating in May
of this year, he hopes to go on to the field of clinical psychology.
28 Minutes of the Amherst Auxiliary Anti-Slavery Society, Feb. 23, 1835.
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Puppy Lust
Ralph Collar ’07E
T
he wrestling puppies were
pretty loud for their sizes,
but no growls were ever
loud enough to drown out the girl’s
notorious laugh. As usual, it came
without warning, sounded fake,
and was discharged almost directly into the yawning boy’s ear. He
winced and shuddered as the waves
traveled up and down his reclined
backbone. He breathed an almost
audible sigh of relief when she fin(Recording:)
ished.
[Puppies growl as they wrestle]
“Do you think they’re talking?
Girl: [laughs]. Do you think they’re talkWhat are they saying?” she asked.
ing? What are they saying?
He rolled over onto his stomBoy: “Fuck you, fuck you!”
ach, and propped his head up on
Girl: “Get off me, bitch. No, you’re the
his hands, seemingly thrilled that
bitch!”
she for once asked what was apBoy: “Fuck you!”
Girl: “I’m not the bigger bitch – you’re the parently an interesting and relevant
question.
bigger bitch!”
“They’re saying “Fuck you!
[Puppies jump up on bed]
Fuck you!” he responded, with a
Girl: “Ah! Help! [Indiscernible baby talk
as puppy licks her lips]. No more barking? tone of unwavering certainty. He
was pretty certain.
I guess the fight’s broken up.”
“You’re the bitch! Get off of me,
Boy: “Bark bark.”
bitch!” she said, assuming the hyGirl: “Mmm, adorable. Go kiss the campothetically rough and deep voice
era.”
of the larger puppy.
Boy: [Kissing sounds]
“Fuck you!”
Girl: “She’s a cute one.”
“I’m not the bigger bitch—
Girl: “Alright.”
Girl: “Have you had enough of your close- you’re the bigger bitch!”
He smiled a little bit, for the
up? Enough movie time? Say good-bye.”
This assignment was an interesting
one. It was for Writing Fiction II, and
we were asked to find or make a candid tape recording or a video that featured some conversation, and to transcribe the conversation. We were then
supposed to turn the conversation into
dialogue for a short fictional scene.
The assignment was fun, because
while the dialogue was authentic, everything around it was fictional—the
words actually did exist, but in a completely different context.
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Ralph Collar - Puppy Lust
first time all day. She didn’t notice. He smiled for about ten seconds and
then yawned. When the yawn subsided, the smile was gone. He forgot he
had been smiling and never went back to finish it up.
The puppies stopped wrestling and growling, and the room fell
silent. He had no use for the puppies if they weren’t going to fight the
awkward pauses with a series of cute, girl-appeasing puppy noises. He
suddenly hated them for abandoning him in a room full of silence, accompanied only by a naked girl, an awkward situation, and a guilty conscience. He felt homesick. As if sensing his disapproval, the smaller
puppy sprang to its feet and jumped up onto bed and in between the two
sweaty bodies.
“Ah! Help!” the girl squealed as the little one licked her nostril.
She was too loud.
“Bark bark.”
There wasn’t much else he could do about it.
She pried the puppy from her face and embraced it. She burrowed
her nose into its neck, scratched its ears, and kissed its nose with undeniable enthusiasm. For a brief moment, as the boy watched her drool over
the puppy, her vulnerability to something as predictable as a dog—not to
mention the accompanying token affection—struck him as delightfully
girl-like and human-sized, and he actually liked her. He even started to
smile again, but she glanced up at him, and eye contact murdered the
whole thing.
“Mmmmm. You’re a cute one,” she mumbled through licked lips,
turning her attention back to the hyper puppy in her lap.
The boy looked down to floor, where the other puppy lay in an
exhausted heap, recovering from its wrestling match. Its eyes opened
with each puppy whimper or girly coo, but slowly closed soon after. Its
leg twitched more and more as it got closer and closer to achieving fullfledged napping, its tiny puppy erection slowly shrinking away from
sight.
Rafael Collar is a history major from Miami with aspirations to eventually get
an MFA in Creative Writing. He’s been dismissed—twice —from the College for
massive levels of academic apathy, so he’s delighted to finally succeed in classes
and to have his work showcased with Amherst’s finest.
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Government Ichthyology of the
West in the 1850’s
Daniel Peterson ’09
his seemingly obvious comment made by David Jordan, an eminent ichthyologist of the early twentieth century,
was in fact a product of 50 years
of scientific investigation of the
American West. Half a century
earlier, government survey expeditions traversed the West on missions involving political boundaries and railroad routes, but they
also brought along naturalists to
observe and document the geology and wildlife of the new lands.
The government in Washington
hoped to accumulate a comprehensive stock of knowledge about the
generally unpopulated territories in
order to help incoming citizen settlers establish themselves and turn
the West into an economic success.
The natural history of the territories
interested distinguished scientists
as well, who viewed the nation’s
new acquisitions as a bountiful
stockpile of data with which to test
theories and improve the knowledge of the world’s natural order.2
Working together, military explorers and academics made significant
progress in the investigation of the
new American landscape.
Both the Pacific Railroad
Surveys of 1853 to 1855 and the
United States and Mexican Bound-
1 Jordan, David Starr. A Guide to the Study of
Fishes. New York: H. Holt, 1905. p. 297
2 Goetzmann, William H. Exploration and Empire:
the Explorer and the Scientist in the Winning of the
American West. New York: Norton, 1978. p. 303
This paper was written as my final
project for Professor Sandweiss’ History of the American West class in
Spring 2006. The course centered on
treating visual materials as historical
documents, and the final paper was
supposed to address some aspect of
Western history through the use of primary source images. I came upon my
chosen topic by accident, as we were
flipping through the pages of William
Emory’s report on the U.S.-Mexican boundary survey of 1848-55. Although the class was directed to look
at the plentiful topographic maps and
landscapes, I spent my time staring
at the amazingly detailed lithographs
of fish in the back of the Zoology volume. The prospect (and challenge) of
documenting thousands of new species in such a short space of time as
government survey teams explored the
new West drew my immediate interest,
which ultimately led to this paper.
“We can say, in general, that in
all waters not absolutely uninhabitable there are fishes.”1
T
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Daniel Peterson - Government Ichthyology
ary Survey of 1848 to 1855, in addition to their primary objectives, contributed considerable time and labor to the collection of specimens of
natural history. Civilian experts were in charge of distinct disciplines
(botany, zoology, geology), but all unoccupied members of the team were
expected to help collect specimens. Even William Emory, the leader of
the U.S./Mexican Boundary Survey, looked for new species and kept a
journal of all plants collected each day.3 The naturalists accompanying
the survey teams had historically been assigned by acclaimed academics
at educational institutions, but in the 1850’s the Smithsonian took over
the role of informing federal survey leaders about natural history and
providing recommendations for scientists. The men selected for these
positions were generally young, well-educated men who hoped to break
into the world of natural history. Established scientists avoided these arduous journeys, leaving the younger, more ambitious generation to brave
disease and Indians to establish their reputations as naturalists.4
Despite the physical hardships of the Western expeditions, specimen collection was a very important and popular method of studying
natural history in the 19th century, and the unexplored regions of the
United States promised many unknown species to the explorer/naturalist.
The young scientists who accompanied the survey teams in the 1850’s
had the goal of finding and documenting as many of the species of plants
and animals of the new territories as they could. To accomplish this task
with regard to aquatic animals, the field zoologists employed a variety
of techniques to capture their specimens. Angling with a hook and line
was practiced, but this method is unsure and can be unproductive. A superior technique proved to be the poisoning of small pools and ponds, by
which all the small fish present would float up to the surface and be easily detected by the collector. This procedure only worked in very small
bodies of water, however, so a third method was by far the most efficient
and commonly practiced: the tactic of seining. To employ a seine net,
the zoologist and his assistant would wade out into a stream or lake and
unfurl a long, horizontal net with a wooden pole at each end, weights
on the bottom, and floats on the top. The collectors then would drag the
net from about 10 feet out into a river towards the shore. This technique
creates a trap between the two waders and captures all organisms larger
3 Welch, Margaret. The Book of Nature: Natural History in the United States, 1825-1875. Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1998. p. 101
4 Farber, Paul. Finding Order in Nature: the Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E.O. Wilson. Baltimore,
Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. pp. 24-25
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than half an inch long present in the area searched. In this way, naturalists could conduct a comprehensive survey of life in a river or lake
without spending a large amount of time or effort, both of which are in
short supply on a long wilderness expedition. After obtaining his specimens, the zoologist would face the task of storing them for future study.
In the 19th century, alcohol served as the primary means of preserving an
organic specimen. Small fish would be placed into mesh bags with other
species from the same location (properly labeled on a slip of paper that
would be pinned to the bag), and deposited directly in a large barrel or
pannier of alcohol carried by a pack animal. If a fish was too large to be
stored in liquor, the naturalist could skin the animal and preserve solely
its exterior. A knowledgeable collector would also record detailed notes
about the specimen, including coloration (which fades very quickly in
alcohol) and the geographic location of its capture. This information was
especially important to scientists studying the specimens in the east, as
many current theories circulating in the ichthyological community were
concerned with the distribution of freshwater fish.5
Transporting the acquired specimens back to the east coast gave
Western collectors yet another challenge. In the 1850’s there were no
railroad lines beyond the Mississippi river, and the survey teams were
naturally located in the most rugged and remote regions of the country.
In order to deliver the new specimens to waiting analysts in the big cities, the survey teams would travel to the closest outpost of civilization,
generally a fort, and commission a military unit to convey their collected
specimens east. The military affiliation of the expeditions allowed for
the official transferal of cargo and the use of effective government transportation channels. The collections were not safe yet, however, as the
road east offered many dangers for the flammable, brittle specimens. For
those collections arrived safely back east, the prominent scholars in each
field did the analysis, wrote the reports, and lent their legitimacy to the
government surveys, eclipsing the younger field naturalists. By the mid1850’s, this scientific circle revolved around the Smithsonian Institution
and its assistant secretary Spencer Fullerton Baird.6
Congress established the Smithsonian in 1846, and in 1850 the
secretary (director), Joseph Henry appointed a 27-year-old Spencer
5 Methods of collection and preservation learned from: Baird, Spencer F. Directions for Collecting,
Preserving and Transporting Specimens of Natural History. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections; v. 2,
no. 7. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1859.
6 Goetzmann
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Baird as its first assistant secretary. Baird immediately began to fulfill
his primary goal, to establish the best research collection of natural history specimens in the country, by bringing his personal collection from
his home in Pennsylvania and endowing it to the museum in Washington. Baird used his position and professional acquaintances to convince
private collectors all over the country to donate their specimens to the
Smithsonian, and the congregation of these materials made Washington
the center of natural history research in the United States. As his reputation grew, leaders of government survey teams came to Baird for advice
on collecting and recommendations for naturalists to enlist. The assistant secretary grew into a position in which all scientists on the Western
expeditions owed their positions to him, and sent their newly collected
specimens directly to his museum in the District. This practice was very
significant for the field of natural history, as the dispersal of collections
had been a bane to the study of new-world fauna and flora in previous
decades. Charles Wilkes, the commander of the Pacific Coast Survey in
1838-1842 had sent his collection of natural history samples to the U.S.
Patent Office, which had facilities for storage of such material, but many
of the specimens were rendered useless to science by neglect and their
preparation for display to the public.7 Baird ran a well-organized museum, however, and the collections that reached the Smithsonian received
attentive care and became very valuable to contemporary and following
investigators.8
Due to his association with the survey leaders and their naturalists,
Baird was recruited to manage the publication of the natural history reports from the expeditions. The assistant secretary had training in natural history work, and authored some of the reports on ornithology and
mammology himself. For the work on fishes, however, Baird enlisted a
colleague, Dr. Charles Girard. Girard had immigrated from France when
Louis Agassiz, a prominent natural historian in Paris and a mentor of
Girard’s, moved to the United States to take up a teaching position at
Harvard University. Girard and Agassiz later had a personal conflict, so
the younger man left Harvard to work with Baird at the Smithsonian. The
7 Blum, Ann Shelby. Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, c1993. p. 131
8 Most information about Spencer Baird taken from:
Dupree, Hunter. Science in the Federal Government, a History of Policies and Activities to 1940. Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957 pp. 92-95, as well as
Allard, Dean C. Spencer Fullerton Baird and the U.S. Fish Commission. New York: Arno Press, 1978. pp. 20-60
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two naturalists worked together during a very productive period of Western exploration, and produced many significant natural history reports,
including those of the Pacific Railroad Surveys and the U.S. and Mexican Boundary Survey. Natural history had become a major emphasis of
the final reports when Baird took over management of the publications,
and the ichthyology section was a principal part of the scientific significance of the works.
Ichthyology was at the center of theoretical debate in the natural
history community in the middle of the 19th century. Darwin had yet
to publish his revolutionary work on natural selection,9 but controversy
about the derivation of distinct species and the way to classify them
dominated the work of academic naturalists. The study of freshwater
fish was important to the developing theories for two main reasons: the
geographic distribution of the aquatic animals seemed to contradict the
idea of evolutionary diffusion (as well as creationary diffusion) and the
challenge of organizing all the known species of fish into a natural order
posed a significant problem, especially because naturalists discovered
many new species every year. These theoretical issues considerably affected the manner in which Baird and Girard presented their reports on
the ichthyology of the West.10
The publications produced by the two naturalists at the Smithsonian are superficially quite simple works. In the ichthyological report for
both the Pacific Railroad Surveys and the U.S./Mexican Boundary Survey11 the entirety of the publication consists of descriptions of species,
tables of specimens, and illustrations of the fish. There are no theoretical
observations made by the author, and little introductory text.12 The only
hint given of an explanation for the ichthyological work done by Girard
are a couple of sentences in the Introductory remarks to the fish report
in the Railroad Expedition publication, in which the author apologizes
that “The fishes of Western America are as yet too little known, and
the amount of new materials for further investigation too great, also, to
warrant anything like an attempt on the present occasion to establish a
9 Darwin finally published On the Origin of Species in 1859.
10 These ideas developed during a personal interview with Professor John Servos, 5/4/2006
11 Official reports: Girard, Charles F. Fishes. In: U.S. War Dept., Reports of Explorations and Surveys,
to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the
Pacific Ocean, v. 10, part 4. Washington: Beverley Tucker, printer, 1858.
Girard, Charles F. Ichthyology of the Boundary. In: William H. Emory, Report on the United States and
Mexican Boundary Survey, v.2, part 2. Washington: C. Wendell, printer, 1859.
12 Girard gives two sentences of introduction in the Pacific Railroad report, none in the Boundary report.
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natural series.”13 Girard will not engage the most difficult task left in
ichthyology, the ordering of all taxa, in his government report because
he knows that he works with incomplete information. This era in natural
history is characterized by a scramble for specimens and their descriptions, naturalists preferring to achieve fame through finding new species
than explaining the universe. An increased focus on empiricism reflected
the spirit of private scientific enterprises as well in the mid-19th century,
as more and more data became available to natural historians and religious doctrine lost some authority in the scientific community. The main
bodies of Girard’s publications consist of pages of physical descriptions
of the taxa and lists of specific specimens obtained on the expeditions
as examples. An aversion to theoretical analysis was bolstered by fact
that in previous decades many theories relating to the nature of living
organisms had been put forth by eminent natural historians only to be
found erroneous by later scientists. As they were producing an official
government publication, Baird and Girard felt pressure to include only
objective facts and avoid conjecture that could jeopardize the perceived
legitimacy of the document. 14
Despite the lack of overt theorizing in the text of the ichthyology
reports, contemporary issues in natural history influenced the authors
with regard to what was included. An interesting technique of natural
history publication debuts in these two works created by Baird and Girard at the Smithsonian: tables of specific specimens obtained on the expeditions, including year and location of capture. These tables illustrate
patently the specific data at the disposal of the author. The most important information in these tables was certainly location of specimen collection, as geographic distribution of freshwater fishes was a hot topic
in natural history of the day. As Darwin explains later in his Origin of
Species, it was not understood why fish from very similar environments
on different continents sometimes looked unmistakably distinct. If God
had created all animals and placed them in habitats that were best suited
to them, why did such a diversity of morphology exist? Another question was how a fish from streams on the east coast could be the same
species as a fish in California, considering that the two watersheds had
considerable barriers between them.15 Both questions related directly to
13 Girard, Charles. Fishes. In: U.S. War Dept., Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most
Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad…, v. 10, part 4 p. 1
14 From the interview with Professor Servos.
15 Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. New York: D. Appleton and
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freshwater fish of the American West, and Girard made sure to record
explicitly the data he received from the survey teams about ichthyological distribution in the New World.
Detailed descriptions of the fish themselves and the manner in
which the author chose to classify them dominate the text of the reports,
which reflects the intense interest of the day in putting all living things
into an organized “tree of life.” The study of animals arguably goes back
to pre-historical cave painting, but the Swede Carl von Linné (known to
the scientific world as Carolus Linnaeus) revolutionized the field of natural history in the 18th century with his Systema Naturae of 1735 and later,
Species Plantarum (1753). Von Linné’s new system turned the study of
living things into a science by proposing an organized and objective way
of classifying plants and animals. Relationships between animals had
previously been considered, but the classification scheme recommended
by the Swedish naturalist began a search for the “natural order” that was
thought to underlie all life on Earth. Von Linné believed that God had
created every living creature, but in the 19th century his system of binomial classification was utilized by scientists around the globe searching
for the unifying theory of natural history, religious or otherwise.16 This
interest in taxonomy created the desire to survey the American West’s
wildlife and prompted the detailed descriptions and classifications of
all fish species encountered there. The ichthyology reports in both the
Pacific Railroad Surveys and the U.S./Mexican Boundary Survey publications merely add to the world’s vast list of known species of fish.
Unlike other classes of animals, however, including birds and mammals,
no single scheme of ichthyological classification was widely accepted,
and scientists wanted more examples of fish to shed light on nature’s
structure. The fish of the New World were popular in this regard, and
the United States government felt that this attention gave it a chance to
prove its scientific legitimacy to the dominant nations of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went into the expeditions and their publications, and copies of the final reports were sent to the governments
of many European nations. This preoccupation with national prestige is
especially visible with regard to the illustrations present in the publications. The Mexican Boundary Survey report boasts 41 plates of fish
alone, and the Pacific Railroad Surveys report, 75. These plates are all
Co., 1859. chapters XI and XII
16 Farber pp. 6-13
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engravings, which were costlier and slower to produce than lithographs
could have been, but were seen by the government backers to reflect the
imperial aesthetic that they wanted to convey.17
The illustrations of the ichthyological report performed a valuable scientific role as well. Images of the fish species described served
to supplement the textual descriptions and clarify the specific fish being
examined. The history of ichthyology by the middle of the 19th century
was littered with confusion over what species had already been discovered and multiple names for the same fish. The function of the expeditions’ natural history reports was to present clearly and unequivocally a
survey of the flora and fauna of the American West, and illustrating the
animals formed an integral part of that mission. The fish plates do not
conform wholly to traditional standards, however, as several new approaches to zoological illustration appear in the works of the Smithsonian’s publications. A trend of subtle stylization of the fish taxa appears
due to the growing recognition of the diversity of appearances a single
species can have.18 The illustrations commissioned by Spencer Baird reflect the idea of a type morph, or a single animal that can represent a
species without being visually identical to all other individuals of the
group. The Smithsonian illustrations of this time period also utilize to a
large extent the technique of placing multiple images of distinct species
on a single plate.19 These novel comparison illustrations allow the author
to present to the viewer the evidence he had for classifying the fish as
he did, and highlight subtle differences that could be missed without
direct contrast. Similarly, previous natural history illustration generally
had only one view of the subject (most often a lateral perspective), but
the plates that appear in the Western survey reports of this time period
often feature multiple views of the same species, generally highlighting
important characters of the animal that serve to identify and classify it.
A good example is the illustration of scales from different parts of a fish,
which was used to help establish classes.20 All of these techniques are
utilized extensively throughout the ichthyological illustrations, but appear rarely in the reports of the other disciplines.
Spencer Baird, as the manager of the publications was the final
decision maker with regard to how fish are illustrated in the natural his17 Blum p. 134-5
18 See Figure A
19 See Figure B
20 See Figure C
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tory reports of the Western expeditions, but he did not engrave the plates
himself. Baird hired a German named John H. Richards to do all the
engraving for the publications of the Pacific Railroad Surveys and the
U.S./Mexican Boundary Survey. Richard had about 20 years experience
in the business of image printing, including professional success in creating what is considered the world’s first lithotint. The artist moved to
Philadelphia from Paris in the 1840’s and was employed by many private
publishers of natural history works, although he engaged in non-scientific projects as well. In 1850 Richard engraved for the Census Bureau, and
during 1851 and 1852 he worked for the U.S. Mint. It was for the next
three years that Richard was employed by Spencer Baird to work in the
Smithsonian museum drawing specimens for government reports.21 Although Richard did not create the illustrations for the Railroad or Boundary expedition reports during this time period, he got to know Baird’s
expectations and preferred style of natural history illustration. Five years
later, when Baird asked Richard to illustrate his newest batch of survey
reports, the artist was already familiar with the desired style of art.22
Richard was put to work illustrating all kinds of specimens, including birds, reptiles, mammals, and fish that Baird sent him from the
Smithsonian storehouses. The artist was required to practice more than
direct reproduction from life, however, as the specimens received were
shriveled alcoholic fish and the illustrated plates should portray the live
organism.23 To effect this change, Richard used his years of experience
with natural history illustration. By comparing figures D and E, which
portray respectively a photograph of the historical alcoholic specimen
and the plate drawn from it, one can see the great challenge in the artist’s
work as well as his impressive skill. Natural history illustration was certainly no task for the beginning engraver or unaccomplished artist. By
finding Richard and employing his skill for so many plates and publications, Spencer Baird certainly recognized the rarity of the German’s
abilities and their incredible importance to the scientific publications.
By examining the diversity of styles exhibited by Richard’s works in the
varying disciplines of natural history the viewer gains insight into how
naturalists conceptualized fish in the 1850’s.
The illustrations included in the ichthyological reports from the
21 Bibliographical information on John Richard from Groce, George C. and Wallace, David H. Dictionary
of Artists in America, 1564-1860. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957. p. 534
22 Blum p. 167
23 See Figure D
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Railroad and Boundary surveys can be compared most effectively with
the illustrations depicting birds from the same surveys. Unlike fish, birds
had a long tradition of illustration by naturalist/artists like John James
Audubon (1785-1851). Audubon was an artist who pictured natural history with an aesthete’s eye. Although his paintings and their subsequent
reproductions on metal are fairly accurate scientifically, they are also
quite visually pleasing. Birds’ wings flaunt rich colors and detailed surroundings give the subject a natural environment on very large paper.
Audubon pictured his zoological subjects in a state of action, depicting not only external form but also function to some degree. Prized by
the general public and private collectors, Audubon’s work was perhaps
influenced equally by scientific and artistic goals. This attractive, colorful and detailed style of depicting animals came to be the accepted
manner of illustrating works of natural history in the early 19th century,
especially those that concerned birds. This influence shows quite clearly
in the plates included in the ornithological reports of the Smithsonian’s
Western survey publications. Baird in fact had a personal relationship
with Audubon, working with the older naturalist as a young man, and
Audubon’s professional influence helped Baird get his position at the
Smithsonian Institution.24 It is understandable, then, why the bird plates
of the natural history survey reports are colorful, full-sheet images of
birds standing in a natural environment, looking very alive and ready to
fly away at any moment.25 In contrast, the fish plates are rarely colored26
and depict not the slightest hint of a background environment. The fish
are also depicted extremely rigidly, without the insinuation of action
present with the ornithological images. Clearly the two types of plates
fulfill different goals of the publishers. The bird images are abundant,
but there was relatively little new ornithological data contributed by that
section of the survey reports compared to the amount of new information presented in the ichthyology section. While the fish plates serve to
support Girard’s classification scheme, the bird images perform no real
scientific role as there are no new species or taxonomies introduced by
the report. The main function of the ornithological plates is to impress
the viewer with the quality of the publication and the authority of the
government that created it.
24 Allard p. 3
25 See figure F
26 I have not encountered a single colored fish plate although some may exist. All bird plates viewed were
hand-colored.
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The fish illustrations published by the Smithsonian in the 1850’s
can also be analyzed with respect to the ichthyological imagery of earlier
eras. The study of fishes had been dominated by Frenchmen since the 18th
century, starting with Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, later the Comte de
Buffon (1707-1788). As manager of the Royal Garden in Paris, Buffon
was a rival of Carl von Linné for preeminence in the field of natural history. Buffon was also a prolific author of scientific works, producing in
his lifetime 44 volumes describing everything from fish to rocks. Buffon
is also associated with the Enlightenment in France for contradicting
religious theology in his theoretical ideas about the natural workings of
the universe, including a theory about the evolution of species due to the
effects of “organic particles.”27 The fish illustrations that appear along
with a 1791 abridged edition of his work28 are quite distinct from those
of the Smithsonian less than 60 years later. The publisher clearly gives
little effort to depicting the animals accurately, with detail and physical
proportions largely disregarded.29 What the publisher gives the viewer is
a glimpse into the exotic world of the sea, with certain strange characters
of the chosen fish exaggerated. Buffon certainly intended his work to be
a serious scientific study, but the emphasis on empiricism embodied by
later works of natural history had not yet developed. The publisher of
Buffon’s work, whether supported by the author or not, uses illustrations
of fish to promote the theories in the work and generate public interest, without relying heavily on the faithfulness of the subject rendering.
From the plates it is clear that the artist was not drawing his subject from
life and did not have the same interest in depicting a specific species as
John Richard did in the middle of the 19th century.
Another French naturalist who contributed very important work
to the study of fish in the early 19th century was Baron Georges Cuvier, who continued Buffon’s work in the natural sciences and is credited
with establishing the fact of extinction, a controversial topic in that era.
With his colleague Bernard Germain Étienne comte de La Ville-sur-Illon La Cépède, Cuvier established the study of the comparative anatomy
of vertebrate animals, a new means with which to establish taxonomic
relationships.30 Using this new method, Cuvier and La Cépède reworked
27 Farber pp. 13-20
28 Buffon, Georges L. L. Buffon’s natural history, Abridged. Dublin: Printed for P. Wogan, 1791
29 See figure G
30 Cuvier, Georges. Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology: From Its Origins to Our Own Time.
Ed. Theodore W. Pietsch; trns. Abby J. Simpson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995
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Buffon’s classification of fishes and authored a two-volume work describing his new system.31 Illustrative plates abound in this work, but
like Buffon, Cuvier does not use the images to bolster his scientific argument. The fish illustrations are much more detailed and accurate than
those of Cuvier’s predecessor, but they merely offer the viewer a chance
to visualize what is being described in the text. There are multiple species of fish on many plates, but they are fish of widely different taxa and
the comparisons to be made between them are not of a scientific nature.32
Cuvier uses his fish plates to convey the diversity of the world’s fishes,
but he leaves the reader to take his scientific assertions for granted when
viewing the images. The plates also played a role in attracting a nonscientific market, as the lithographic prints are beautifully executed and
most are hand-colored with bright inks.
The publications of Baird, Girard, and Richard must also be compared with publications concerning fish in contemporary times. A good
example of a European survey report of the time period was Charles Darwin’s Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle, in which he documents the
animal life observed on his voyage aboard the British scientific expedition to South America and the South Pacific.33 Fish are well-represented
in the volume, and are illustrated extremely accurately by fine lithography. The images are shaded and detailed extraordinarily, and none of the
stylization apparent in Richard’s engravings is observable.34 Comparative plates are rare, however, as are secondary views of the fish, although
all specimens are depicted with their mouths open, showing interesting
teeth. These choices of the publisher indicate that Darwin was more interested in the overall form of the animal, and how it was suited to its environment, than comparative classification. It is well known, of course,
that Darwin was interested in the relationships of species to one another
because of his theory of evolution by natural selection, but with the ichthyological plates in his report he seems more interested in visualizing
extremes of fish morphology than taxonomy. The absence of stylized
types also indicates an interest in individual body types, a key feature
of his revolutionary theory. A viewer comparing Darwin’s publication to
31 Cuvier, Georges. Oeuvres de Cuvier et Lacépède, contenant le complément de Buffon à l’histoire des
mammifères et des oiseaux, l’historie des cétacés, batraciens, serpents et poissons v. 15, 16. Paris: Garnier
Frères, 1883.
32 See figure H.
33 Darwin, Charles. The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, During the Years 1832-1836. London:
Smith, Elder, 1839-1843.
34 See Figure I.
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the American survey reports of the 1850’s would also note immediately
the lack of self-conscious ostentation in the British volume. The fish
plates have no border, in fact most have only one view and the species
name at the bottom of the page, in contrast with the Smithsonian’s plates
that have titles at the top and are filled with multiple views. Darwin’s
images serve to document the many new species he describes, but they
do not offer evidence for the names assigned to the fish or change in a
species over time.
A final genre of fish illustration to be considered is the category of
contemporary sportsmen’s books that contain fish plates. Although not
scientific in nature, many volumes on angling contain images of fish, and
these represent a public conception of fish that differs from the scientific
perspective apparent in the previously examined works. Two volumes,
Frank Forester’s Fish and Fishing of the United States (1850)35 and The
American Angler’s Guide (1857),36 epitomize the angling literature of the
1850’s. These works are written for a popular audience, and the images
that appear with the text serve a totally different purpose than Richard’s
engravings. The fish plates present here illustrate not specific specimens,
but a type of game fish that could span more than one species. Neither
multiple views of a fish, nor are comparative plates are present in either volume. The images are also perceptibly created on a lower budget,
as the engravings are done on wood rather than copper or steel. Frank
Forester’s claims that all illustrations are “drawn from nature,” and most
of his images are reasonably accurate, but they do not display the precision of character and proportion measurements that are discernible in the
government reports. The fish plates in Frank Forester’s also incorporate
background settings for some fish, indicating an interest in completing
the aesthetic form of the picture. Fish floating in space are acceptable
for a taxonomist only considering physical characteristics of a specimen,
but a publisher looking to sell a book to the public would certainly see
the advantage of giving a more realistic impression. The fish in this case
are pictured lying on the bank of a river or stream, conjuring the image
of a plump pickerel recently caught by a happy angler,37 surely what every fisherman wants to see when reading about fishing. This engraved
35 Forester, Frank. Frank Forester’s Fish and Fishing of the United States and British provinces of North
America. Illustrated from nature by the author. New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1850
36 Brown, John J. The American Angler’s Guide; or, Complete Fisher’s Manual, for the United States. New
York: D. Appleton and company, 1857
37 See Figure J.
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background would be expensive to have engraved, however, so only the
frontispiece and a few other well-placed plates boast an environment for
their fish.
The publisher of John Brown’s American Angler’s Guide takes a
slightly different tactic. The fish images presented are generally less accurate than Forester’s, and some should be considered relatively bad
depictions.38 Interestingly, the plates that appear in the Guide are mostly
wood engravings, but a few fish are pictured with lithography. Whatever
the reason for this inconsistency (cost, or the switching of artists), this
fluctuation of medium results in the destruction of any confidence in
morphological comparison between plates. Brown does not even print
the scientific name of the fish with the image; one must look to the
body of text to find that piece of information so vital to a scientific
audience. This fact highlights one other major difference between the
angling books and the scientific works: in the survey reports (except for
Darwin’s), the plates come all at the end of the report, as an appendix,
while in the sportsmen’s volumes the plates appear amidst leaves of text.
This distinction embodies the contrast between the function of the two
types of illustration; while the scientific plates are meant to be a resource
for a knowledgeable professional, the popular plates are merely included
to entertain the reader and maintain interest in a topic not suited to text
alone.
It has become clear from this analysis of 19th century ichthyological plates that the work of Baird, Girard, and Richard amounts to a
new definition of scientific illustration. Even while attempting to emulate successful European models of publications, the men at work in the
Smithsonian took a giant step in the production of scientific images. In
no other genre of fish illustration did the author or publisher intend his
plates to be used in such a direct, practical manner. Darwin certainly
utilized illustration to make clear the new species he identified, and such
plates were meant to act as references for scientists working in the field
afterwards, but the illustrations that appear in the American survey reports supersede this type of image with a new level of scientific clarity.
By employing the methods of species stylization, comparative plates,
and multiple views of the same specimen, the American publishers gave
the pictures not only reference authority, but scientific legitimacy in their
own right. The plates were included in the reports in order that scientists
38 See Lake Trout, figure K
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of a later day could view them and make inferences about the “natural
order” of fish just by glancing at an image. The plates themselves make
a scientific argument that no ichthyological illustration had previously
made.
The Smithsonian’s ichthyology publications of this time period
had almost immediate significance with regard to Darwin’s proposed
theory of evolution by natural selection published in 1859. The dominant
thought about animal taxonomy in earlier eras reaching back to ancient
Greece was that all organisms were arranged on a hierarchy of life from
“lowest” worm to the “highest” mammal, humans. Darwin’s theory eventually began to destroy this idea, but it was not immediately discarded
and was in fact used to oppose evolution by natural selection with regard
to fishes. It was thought that because sharks and cartilaginous fishes
had more complex nervous and muscular systems, they were “higher”
creatures and could not have evolved before bony fishes as seemed to
be indicated by evolutionary paleontology.39 Although no paleontology
appears in the ichthyology sections of the survey reports, the themes of
change in species over geography is a massive piece of evidence in favor
of evolution. If freshwater bony fishes are constantly evolving to suit
their environment, they cannot they be “lower” than saltwater sharks,
which along with every living organism are also constantly evolving to
suit their habitat. The terms “high” and “low” lose favor with natural historians in this time period, and Darwin’s theory accomplishes this progress with help from ichthyological reports of Western American fish.
The Smithsonian fish publications of the time period also had significance closer to home, with regard to the national economy. Spencer
Baird, in the 1870’s goes on to found the U.S. Fish Commission to investigate the status of food fishes in the country.40 Fish industries were
a large economic force on the Atlantic coast, and during this time period
the salmon fisheries were developing rapidly, leading David Jordan to
estimate in 1905 that the total worth of the canned salmon produced
every year was $3,400,000.41 This economic significance led Baird to
ask Congress to appropriate money for researching ways of protecting
the industry. Although not often recognized as an early conservationist, Baird, as director of the Commission, proposed novel ideas relating
39 Jordan pp. 380-6
40 Allard pp. 69-76
41 Goode, George Brown. The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States. Washington: Govt.
Print. Off., 1884-87
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to the efficient management of natural resources, and went so far as to
establish a program of artificially stocking young fish in economically
important watersheds.42 As part of his publicity campaign, Baird and his
younger colleague George Brown Goode produced a set of volumes entitled The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, which
includes 532 plates of sea animals and their capture by fishermen, including over 200 of American fish.43 These plates show a clear influence
from Baird’s earlier work with the Western survey expedition reports,
as the fish display similar stylization to the work of John Richard. The
engravings are drawn by H.L. Todd from the collections of the Smithsonian museum, and some of the specimens used must have been those
collecting by the Western expeditions. Some plates display the technique
of comparative anatomy as well, showing multiple morphs of the same
species.44 Although these illustrations are not intended for a scientific
audience, but rather to promote public knowledge of fishery issues, the
techniques developed in the 1850’s to depict scientific arguments influence fish imagery for years to come.
The images created by Baird’s circle in Washington during the
1850’s may not be the cutting-edge of ichthyology today, but they were
a vital step in the evolution of scientific consideration of illustration.
By depicting subjects with exacting accuracy and enough confidence
to employ the images as representations of a legitimate argument, the
ichthylogical plates brought the study of fish to new heights. We will
never have a complete taxonomy of fish, as the evolution of species is
constantly in progress and undiscovered organisms have the entire ocean
in which to hide, but only through such methodical and meticulous labor
has our understanding of the aquatic world been able to reach the advanced development it enjoys in the 21st century.
Daniel Peterson is a Biology major and an ardent fisherman. He doesn’t believe
in God, Fate, or random chance. He can’t fly so he swims instead.
42 Allard pp. 132-150
43 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. National Marine Fisheries Historical Image Collection.
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/nmfs, accessed 5/14/06
44 See The Krashna Ryba, Red-fish of Idaho, or Blue-back Salmon, Figure L.
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Appendices
A
B
C
D
E
F
Figure A – Fish Plate VIII from: Girard, Charles F. Fishes. In: U.S. War Dept., Reports of Explorations
and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi
River to the Pacific Ocean, v. 10, part 4. Washington: Beverley Tucker, printer, 1858. J.H. Richard del.
Figure B – Fish Plate 11 from: Girard, Charles F. Ichthyology of the Boundary. In: William H. Emory,
Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, v.2, part 2. Washington: C. Wendell, printer,
1859. J.H. Richard del.
Figure C – Fish Plate 14 from: Girard, Charles F. Ichthyology of the Boundary. In: William H. Emory,
Figure D – Photograph of alcoholic specimen #838, Pimelodus affinis, stored at the Smithsonian Museum
Support Center, Suitland Maryland. Photo by author.
Figure E – Fish Plate 16 from: Girard, Charles F. Ichthyology of the Boundary. In: William H. Emory,
Figure F – Bird Plate 1 from: William H. Emory, Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, v.2, part 2. Washington: C. Wendell, printer, 1859. J.H. Richard del. Handcolored.
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G
H
I
J
K
L
Figure G – Plate 33 from: Buffon, Georges L. L. Buffon’s Natural History, Abridged. Dublin: Printed for
P. Wogan, 1791. Unsigned.
Figure H – Plate opposite page 448 from Cuvier, Georges. Oeuvres de Cuvier et Lacépède, contenant le
complément de Buffon à l’histoire des mammifères et des oiseaux, l’historie des cétacés, batraciens, serpents et poissons v. 15. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1883. Handcolored
Figure I – Fish Plate 26 from: Darwin, Charles. The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, During the
Years 1832-1836. London: Smith, Elder, 1839-1843. From Nature on Stone by B. Waterhouse Hawkins.
Figure J – Plate opposite page 161 in: Forester, Frank. Frank Forester’s fish and fishing of the United
States and British provinces of North America. Illustrated from nature by the author. New York: Stringer &
Townsend, 1850. From Nature on Wood by H.W. Herbert.
Figure K – Plate opposite page 85 in: Brown, John J. The American Angler’s Guide; or, Complete Fisher’s
Manual, for the United States. New York: D. Appleton and company, 1857. Unsigned.
Figure L – Fish Plate 190 from: Goode, George Brown. The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United
States. Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1884-87. Drawing by H.L. Todd from specimen in U.S. National
Museum. Image taken from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. National Marine Fisheries
Historical Image Collection. http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/historic/nmfs, accessed 5/14/06
Thoughts of Amherst
66
Vol.1 - Fall 2006
Thoughts of Amherst
Submission Guidelines:
We accept any academic work done by Amherst students during the semester preceding publication. Period. Not just papers written for Amherst classes. We
take work from Five College classes, half-credit classes
like music lessons or ensembles, and theses or parts of
theses. There are no constraints on medium or style. If
you got credit for it, we will publish it! Please submit:
-Academic essays
-Creative writing
-Lab reports
-Computer programs
-Visual arts
-Recordings of theatre, dance, and music performances
-Projects in languages other than English (with an
English translation)
-Anything else you did for credit in the past semester.
We will begin accepting submissions for next semester’s edition immediately. We do accept multiple submissions, so don’t agonize over which of your beloved masterpieces to submit. Send them all! See our website
(www.amherst.edu/~thoughts) for more information.
To ask questions or send in a submission, e-mail:
thoughts@amherst.edu.

Pdf file of Fall 2006

Transcription

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