Emily Hayflick

Within the borders of the United States, federal government employees work to keep migratory and protected bird bodies mobile following their deaths. My research focuses specifically on dead eagles, and the humans who collect, ship, study, test, pluck, and utilize their bodies, interrogating how federal bird protection legislation produces environmental subjects. Through an examination of the legally approved interactions between humans and protected wildlife species, I examine rituals of death to ask how wildlife legislation shapes interspecies relations within the current borders of the United States. Focusing on the movement of avian bodies through the centralized repositories that facilitate the circulation of these birds to Indigenous communities and research and education facilities, I attend to the material, temporal, and legal facets of these circuits as I conduct research with the institutions and individuals who implement and are affected by these federal policies.