Through the Looking Glass of the Coming Kingdom: Science, City, and Authority in Anita Newcomb McGee’s Anthropology, 1888–1897

Anita Newcomb McGee is an underexplored figure in the history of late nineteenth-century Washington, DC science, appearing only in reference to her father, astronomer Simon Newcomb, and her husband, anthropologist W J McGee. This article analyzes her early career work in anthropology by centering science and the city. Contributing to urban histories of science, the history of anthropology and the social sciences, and the urban history of Washington, it argues that an analysis of Anita McGee’s simultaneous centrality and marginality in Washington science – a tension produced by her scientific lineage, class status, and gender – shows how a discipline like anthropology in Washington took shape through a relational gaze toward the city’s development. Second, and relatedly, it argues that a focus on Anita’s early career work reveals how women in Washington were able to claim intellectual space in anthropology by claiming space and authority within the city. Her study of white “communistic societies” in the United States, such as the Amana, Oneida, and later the Koreshan Unity of Chicago, delved into notions of heredity, reproduction, and the “directive forces” of society. Through a translation of cultural evolutionary discourse to these white communities, and then to urban reform, her science participated in a broader project in defining and stabilizing the white, middle-class subject, tying together anthropology, authority, and the modern metropolis.