A diverse set of contributions to the expanding field of ecocritical studies Seeking a broad reexamination of visual culture through the lenses of ecocriticism, environmental justice, and animal studies, Picture Ecology offers a diverse range of art historical criticism formulated within an ecological context. This book brings together scholars whose contributions extend chronologically and geographically from eleventh-century Chinese painting to contemporary photography of California wildfires. The book's fifteen interdisciplinary essays provide a dynamic, cross-cultural approach to an increasingly vital area of study, emphasizing the environmental dimensions inherent in the content and materials of aesthetic objects. Picture Ecology provides valuable new approaches for considering works of art in ways that are timely, intellectually stimulating, and universally significant. With contributions by Alan C. Braddock, Maura Coughlin, Rachael Z. DeLue, T. J. Demos, Monica Dominguez Torres, Finis Dunaway, Stephen F. Eisenman, Emily Gephart, Karl Kusserow, De-nin D. Lee, Gregory Levine, Anne McClintock, James Nisbet, Andrew Patrizio, Sugata Ray, and Greg M. Thomas. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum

A groundbreaking ecocritical exploration of American art that examines the complex and evolving relationship between art and the environment Public awareness of environmental issues has never been greater, nor has the need for imagining more sustainable and ethical habits of human action and thought, including environmentally informed ways of understanding art history. This multidisciplinary book offers the first broad ecocritical review of American art and examines the environmental contexts of artistic practice from the colonial period to the present day. Tracing how visions of the environment have changed from the Native-European encounter to the emergence of modern ecological activism, more than a dozen scholars and practitioners discuss how artists have both responded to and actively instigated changes in ecological understanding. Far-reaching in its interpretive approach, Nature's Nation looks at artworks across genres and media-including painting, sculpture, prints, photography, decorative arts, and video-revealing important new discoveries about creative encounters with environmental history and politics through materials, techniques, subjects, and ideas. The book features work by more than one hundred artists, from Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Cole, and Winslow Homer to Georgia O'Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Providing a fascinating and timely reframing of more than three centuries of American art, this volume is a powerful example of how greater ecological consciousness can expand and enrich the discipline of art history. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Musuem Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art Museum (10/13/18-01/06/19) Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (02/02/19-05/05/19) Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas (05/25/19-09/09/19)

An unconventional history of Philadelphia that operates at the threshold of cultural and environmental studies, A Greene Country Towne expands the meaning of community beyond people to encompass nonhuman beings, things, and forces. By examining a diverse range of cultural acts and material objects created in Philadelphia—from Native American artifacts, early stoves, and literary works to public parks, photographs, and paintings—through the lens of new materialism, the essays in A Greene Country Towne ask us to consider an urban environmental history in which humans are not the only protagonists. This collection reimagines the city as a system of constantly evolving constituents and agencies that have interacted over time, a system powerfully captured by Philadelphia artists, writers, architects, and planners since the seventeenth century. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Maria Farland, Nate Gabriel, Andrea L. M. Hansen, Scott Hicks, Michael Dean Mackintosh, Amy E. Menzer, Stephen Nepa, John Ott, Sue Ann Prince, and Mary I. Unger.

Issues of ecology - both as they appear in the works of nature writers and in the works of literary writers for whom place and the land are central issues - have long been of interest to literary critics, and have given rise over the last two decades to the now firmly established field of ecocriticism. The essays in this volume, written by art historians and literary critics, seek to bring the study of American art into the expanding discourse of ecocriticism. ""A Keener Perception"" offers a series of case studies on topics ranging from John White's watercolors of the Carolina landscape executed during Sir Walter Raleigh's 1585 Roanoke expedition to photographs by environmental activist Eliot Porter. Rather than merely resurrect past instances of ecologically attuned art, this volume features essays that resituate many canonical figures, such as Thomas Eakins, Aaron Douglas, and Isamu Noguchi, in an ecocritical light by which they have yet to be viewed. Studying such artists and artworks through an ecocritical lens not only provides a better understanding of these works and the American landscape, but also brings a new interpretive paradigm the field of art history - a field that many of these critics believe would do well to embrace environmental concerns as a vital area of research. In highlighting the work of scholars who bring ecological agendas to their study of American art, as well as providing models for literary scholars who might like to better incorporate the visual arts into their own scholarship and teaching, ""A Keener Perception"" is truly a landmark collection - timely, consequential, and controversial.