Iterations of Landscape

Inspired by the current rise in scholarship on art in Indigenous and African Diaspora traditions, this course will consider myriad ways of imagining land and life. It will chart pre-twentieth century landscape painting that exercises the picturesque in the time of slavery and imperialism and moves towards ecocritical considerations in our current moment, touching Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. We will then look at how understandings of our world are cultivated in Modern and Contemporary art in multi-media and growing digital practices from the 20th century forward. How do artists see and imagine our emplacement and encode the social world through place? How can we use such ideas to chart our way through a changing climate and world? How does landscape, even in its apparent challenges, function as home/friend/support? In what ways can land symbolize grounds for empathy rather than serve as a site of polarization with distinct interests forever at odds and incommensurable?