Human Remains and the Construction of Race and History, 1897--1945

This dissertation examines the use of human remains as tools for research and display over the course of a fifty-year span in the United States. It explores the shift away from racial classification toward emerging ideas regarding human prehistory and evolution. This project serves as both an intellectual history of the discourse surrounding these remains and a cultural history of the exhibitions that millions of visitors encountered at museums and fairs throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth century.