American Sublime

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This lecture course examines the transmutation of 18th-century European philosophical and aesthetic notions of the Sublime, the Beautiful and the Picturesque into distinctly American art and literature. Through considering American 19th-century paintings by such artists as Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, and literary selections from such poets and novelists as William Cullen Bryant and Herman Melville, we will explore ways in which nature became America’s version of the transcendental experience of the Sublime. Moreover, this focus on nature held serious implications for the formation of American character and national destiny, issues that have taken on particular urgency in our own times. Field trips will take us to the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.