Saturday, April 8th
Rackham Building,
East Conference Room

10:00-11:45am Scholarly Panel

“Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Historicized Picturesque” 

Description:
While scholars have attended to the influence of the picturesque on Susan Fenimore Cooper's writings, we have not given sufficient attention to the ways in which her work challenges that aesthetic tradition by attending closely to the historical realities of landscape.  In this presentation, I explain the ways in which Cooper's writings historicize the picturesque.  The presentation is part of a larger book-length project called "Passion before Walden," which examines a variety of mid-nineteenth-century American expressions of love for landscape.

Publications:
Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours (U of Georgia P, 1998)
Essays on Nature and Landscape by Susan Fenimore Cooper (U of Georgia P, 2002)