Resident Graduate Scholar Seminar: Bert Geyer, Art History, “Designing the Forest: The Aesthetic and U.S. Imperial Forestry, 1862-1942”
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 FileWhat if forestry is considered an aesthetic practice pursuing design acumen over beauty? From CivilWar land legislation to the conversion of the New Deal to WWII production, this dissertation analyzes U.S. imperial forestry as a site of burgeoning contest over who designs the forest and how. It proposes forestry sensoria attuned throughout U.S. imperial peripheries as equally pertinent to aesthetic history as those in art and architectural history and philosophy situated in metropoles of the U.S. and Europe. Afforestation and reforestation projects in the Midwest, Philippines, and Caribbean make salient the reflective judgment, shuttling amidst reason and sensory experience, integral to perceiving the forest. Historicizing forestry sensoria both registers how normative imaginations of the forest materialized into distinct forms and suggests the perceptual dimension of normative judgements regulating forest technics as a necessary reckoning of environmental design in the Anthropocene.
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Date posted
Sep 3, 2025
Date updated
Jan 16, 2026