Please join us for the very first CEH TALK of the semester as we welcome Post Doctoral Fellow Emma Pask. At Department of Anthropology, Emma is involved in the research project Settler Colonial Beasts which studies the historical and present roles of feral animals in forming frontiers. In this presentation, Emma will share with us some of her work from Texas working with cattle and ranchers.

As per usual, the event is free and open to everyone interested. Snacks, coffee, and tea provided.

Abstract

Texas Fever was and is a cattle disease transmitted by a tick. After almost seven decades of research, conflicts, and sickly animals, the ticks were said to be eradicated from Texas in 1943, but this is not entirely true. Today, from biosecurity programs situated in Texas and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the ticks are remotely monitored throughout Central America, where it is still endemic and from where it is still perceived as a threat to the American cattle industry. But this paper goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, when Texas Fever was devastating cattle raisers across the United States, to investigate where biosecurity programs like this one come from. Namely, I am interested in the way it emerges from disputes over jurisdiction. Working with archival documents, I examine how Texas cattle raisers, the newfound state of Texas, and the federal government made arrangements to find the origins of this cattle disease and mitigate its wide-ranging economic impacts. In doing so, I trace longstanding issues of distrust between these actors. The paper argues that disease and degeneration are constitutive of the economic and ecological formation of the American West, shaping its ongoing property relations, and ensuring Texas remain an anxious and vulnerable space for animal disease management through to the present.