Drawing on landscape painting, photography, traveler's accounts, and other sources, this presentation explores the evolution of American attitudes towards nature. Beginning with perceptions of the American landscape as a howling wilderness, a wasteland to be tamed and transformed, the lecture traces the social, cultural and economic forces that led to the perception of wild nature as something of value to be experienced and preserved. Key topics and figures along the way include the sublime, romanticism, Henry David Thoreau, Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School, John Muir, Ansel Adams, and the Lorax.

Charles Mitchell has been on the faculty at Elmira College since 1993. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Lynbrook (on Long Island) he still occasionally refers to everything north of Yonkers as “upstate.” He teaches a wide variety of courses in American cultural history, with specific interests in environmental history, the history of ideas about nature, and the representation of the landscape in literature and art.

This program, which is free and open to the public, is made possible through the support of the New York Council for the Humanities’ Speakers in the Humanities program."