Resident Graduate Scholar Seminar: Bert Geyer, Art History, “Aesthetic Temporalities of Great Plains Afforestation, 1848-1902”
Resident Graduate Scholar Seminar
April 1, 2026
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
Institute for the Humanities, 153 Behavioral Sciences Building
Address
1007 W. Harrison St., Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
Download iCal FileThis seminar will discuss the first chapter of Bert’s dissertation, “The Forester’s Sensorium: Perceiving the Forests of US Empire, 1848-1942.” The chapter explicates the aesthetic dimension of discourse and experiments that sought to transform the US prairie into forest. By demonstrating how art historiography and aesthetics were constitutive in how “forest” was perceived and normatively prescribed, it provincializes the history of forestry and interprets a history of art history beyond its conventional objects.
Bert Geyer’s dissertation analyzes art, design, and forestry’s entwined interventions upon the forests of US empire in the Midwest, Caribbean, and Pacific. It examines how the forest was performatively mediated—not just through forest technics, markets, and imperial governance but also through images, buildings, infrastructure, and temporal schemata. He has presented to the Society of Architectural Historians, College Art Association, and American Society for Environmental History and been supported by the Forest History Society.
The seminar is a discussion of a pre-circulated paper. To request a copy of the paper ahead of time please email huminst@uic.edu.
Contact huminst@uic.edu to request accessibility accommodations.
Date posted
Sep 3, 2025
Date updated
Mar 30, 2026