Ruka Hussain

DPhil Research Topic

"Visualising time and space in American natural history: text, image and display between Catlin and Bell."

Supervisor: Stephen Tuffnell

My research examines how text, image, and display shaped ideas of natural history during two pivotal moments of American land transformation: Native removal and westward railroad expansion. Focusing on the American artist George Catlin (1796–1872) and the English photographer and railroad surveyor William Abraham Bell (1841–1921), I explore how public and elite knowledge systems intersected to construct scientific and cultural authority in the nineteenth century.

Through a comparative study of their visual and textual practices of investigating and mediating nature, I investigate the porous boundaries between vernacular knowledge-making, ideological impulses, and professionalising science. My work adopts a meta-formal approach to material and visual culture, taking up books, images, artworks, and exhibition practices as interfaces of scientific knowledge across changing historical contexts.

My broader research interests lie in the environmental humanities, global and imperial history, and histories of art and literature. I have previously convened/co-convened the Environmental History Working Group and Interdisciplinary Visual Culture Studies seminar.

Aside from my studies, I work in the field of study abroad, supporting visiting students at Oxford. Before starting my DPhil, I completed a BA in History and an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture at Oxford. The latter was funded by the Slade Scholarship and the Oxford-Cathcart Scholarship at Harris Manchester College. My DPhil project is funded by the Merton Weston Earth Scholarship, in which I am the first recipient representing the Humanities division.