After Nature: Art and Environmental Imagination

Catalog description

This course looks at what it means to make art in, of, and after nature, and asks how that art might contribute to shaping the world we live in. Tracing a trajectory from the collection and display of natural history specimens to views of European and American landscapes to contemporary artists who address ecological crises, the course offers both a history of landscape in western art and a study of environmental imagination. We will further explore how nature is represented on Cornell's campus, including in the Johnson Museum, the Lab of Ornithology and the Botanic Gardens. This course includes opportunities to creatively reflect on our personal relationship to nature through hands-on activities. Students from all disciplines are welcome to engage with themes including natural curiosities, parks and gardens, ideas of wilderness, the picturesque, environmental preservation, earth works, and the post-natural.