Invisible Landscapes

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course is an exploration of anthropogenic landscapes, past and present, that for various reasons have been "invisible"-sometimes to long-term inhabitants, sometimes to newly arrived colonizers, sometimes to academics and other researchers, sometimes to legislators, and/or sometimes to tourists and other public audiences. Examples include, among others, sophisticated long-term geo-biological manipulations of soils, stones, and trees; legacies of colonization and industrialization; sensorial worlds beyond the visual; and non-human infrastructures and ruins. The class is broadly comparative, drawing on diverse case studies to address two central questions: 1) Can we think about, document, visualize, and analyze "invisible" landscapes without forcing them to conform to historically and culturally specific notions of monumentality, materiality and temporality, nature and culture, etc.? and 2) What methods (or combinations of methods) employed by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, architects, ecologists, and other researchers can shed light on "invisible" landscapes and the people (and other beings) who inhabit(ed) them?