The Department of Art History at SUNY New Paltz will host a lecture by Professor Kerry Dean Carso (Art History ) entitled “Landscapes of Nationalism and the Roots of Conservation in 19th-century America,” on Monday, Sept.22, at 7 p.m. in Lecture Center 104 on the New Paltz campus. This lecture is being presented as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Carso’s lecture will focus on 19th-century American landscape paintings and how they relate to both the formation of national identity and the roots of the conservation movement. Additionally, her discussion will highlight the strong influence of 19th-century landscape ideals on later conservation efforts as well as her experience as a 2014 Scholar-in-Residence at the Grey Towers National Historic Site in Milford, Pa.
This lecture is sponsored by the Art History Department, the Art History Association and the Office of the Provost. For additional information, call (845) 257-3875.
About Kerry Dean Carso
Professor Carso is chair and associate professor of art history at the SUNY New Paltz, where she teaches courses on American art and architecture. Her research focuses on interconnections between the arts and literature in the 19th-century United States. She is the author of “American Gothic Art and Architecture in the Age of Romantic Literature,” forthcoming from the University of Wales Press in 2014. She has also published several articles on Gothic Revival architecture and Romantic painting in peer-reviewed journals including Mosaic, Winterthur Portfolio, Symbiosis, The Hudson River Valley Review and Gothic Studies. Her essay on architecture in Hudson River School paintings appeared in the exhibition catalogue for The Hudson River to Niagara Falls: Nineteenth-Century Landscape Paintings from the New-York Historical Society (2009) at the Dorsky Museum of Art on the SUNY New Paltz campus. Carso also published an essay “Man and Nature in the Hudson Valley” in the exhibition catalogue Russel Wright: The Nature of Design (Dorsky, 2012).
Carso holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in American Studies from Boston University and an A.B. in English and AmericanLiterature and Language from Harvard University. She taught previously at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va.
About the Wilderness Act
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Wilderness Act, one of the most important federal environmental policy acts of the 20th century. SUNY New Paltz has joined a statewide effort to commemorate this act and its legacy of land protection and conservation.
The College, in partnership with the Mohonk Preserve, the Wallkill Valley Land Trust, Adirondack Wild, the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government and other colleges and universities across New York, will host a series of events with the goal of invigorating/ reinvigorating conservation values and understanding of the natural world.
In addition to faculty incorporating the Wilderness Act into their class discussions, assignments, and activities, please consider attending events this fall, which tie to the spirit of this groundbreaking act.
For a full listing of events celebrating the Wilderness Act, visit www.newpaltz.edu/wilderness50.
