Environmental Art History

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course explores the historical and contemporary relationships between art and the environment in a global context. Two central questions will guide our inquiry. First, what constitutes "environmental art" as a field that is both theoretically and historically grounded yet open to redefinition, methodological innovation, and interdisciplinary experimentation? Second, what are the stakes of historicizing this field in a global framework? For instance, in parts of Asia, the term "environmental art" often refers to the environment in spatial and technological terms detached from environmentalist thought. Similarly, Land Art, a key milestone in the field, creates a productive tension with land-based or ecological perspectives. Considering the term's porosity and evolving definitions, the course adopts a broad purview, encompassing landscape painting, still life paintings, and plantation architecture, as well as recent debates on the Anthropocene, Indigenous land-based thought, environmental justice, and new materialisms. In addition to examining the objects and theories that constitute environmental art, the course will also consider cases of environmentally-informed art historical practice.