Conference Presentations by Scholars


Below, you will find video recordings of the keynote lecture and two panel discussions from the Newberry Library Picturing America School Collaboration conference in October 2009. Click on the arrow below the screen to start each video. You may expand the videos to full screen by clicking on the icon with arrows at the bottom right of each screen.

 

Contents of this page include:

 

"Learning Through Landscape"

Neil Harris, Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus in the Departments of History and Art History at the University of Chicago, discusses the value of using images of natural and built landscapes in the classroom.

 

 

 

"Interpretting the American Landscape"

In this panel, Sarah Burns (Indiana University), Martha Sandweiss (Princeton University), and Joshua Brown (CUNY), explore American landscapes from various disciplines, including art history, history, and American studies. Each scholar seeks to find ideas in pictures, and suggests ways to move beyond using images as passive illustrations.

 

 

"Landscape, Art, and Literature" (October Conference)

H. Daniel Peck (Vassar College), Michael Conzen (University of Chicago), and Andrew Walker (St. Louis Museum of Art), explore landscape images related to American literature, geography and cartography, and museum studies, respectively. In this presentation, each scholar begins with an image from the Picturing America set and places it within a broad context of landscape imagery.

 

 

"Landscape, Art, and Literature" (October Conference)

H. Daniel Peck (Vassar College), Kymberly Pinder (Art Institute of Chicago), and Andrew Walker (St. Louis Museum of Art), explore landscape images related to American literature, 20th century African-American art, and museum studies, respectively

 

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4/17/10 - Landscape Art Literature from Newberry Library on Vimeo.

 

"Opening Address" (August Conference)

Sarah Burns examines Thomas Cole’s famous "Oxbow" and test runs some art historical tools that might aid us in teasing out its story and its manifold implications

 

Picturing America: Sarah Burns from Newberry Library on Vimeo.