A Giant White Lab Coat: Mapping the Creation of a Pure and Gendered Continent through U.S. Antarctic Research Stations, 1939-1965

Antarctica in the mid-20th century was largely conceptualized by Americans as a "pure" continent, a wilderness mostly untouched by humans yet also a place where men could go to become "cleansed" in multiple ways. This work examines the relationship between these cultural discussions of manliness and cleanliness and Antarctic scientific research culture as it was being established and codified at this time. Through accessing methodology used in historical and anthropological sub-disciplines like infrastructure history, labor history, and maritime anthropology and referencing existing scholarship on race and the colonization of an unpeopled "White Continent," this paper makes its intervention at a time when the relationship between military and scientific research was also undergoing significant evolution. This work explores connections between Antarctic exploration and space exploration and examines resonating conceptions of purity and gender in these two spheres in addition to discourse on what it means to colonize places that have no existing human inhabitants, whether on Earth or off. Analyzing the ways in which currents set in place or bolstered during mid-20th century exploration persist today can practically improve researcher experience as well as enrich researchers' understanding of the scientific research culture to which they enter, enabling an even higher quality of scientific work.