May
26
to May 27

Symposium: New Meaning in the Matter of Nineteenth-Century Art

  • The National Institute of Art History (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Here’s where I’ll be in May:

“Materials19: New Meaning in the Matter of Nineteenth-Century Art”

Co-organized by Michelle Foa and Sarah Gould

Co-sponsored by Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne and Tulane University, and hosted by INHA (The National Institute of Art History)

May 26-27, 2025

This symposium aims to bring together scholars working in an area that has received far too little attention in the study of nineteenth-century art, namely, the material composition of art works and its role in generating the meaning of those objects.  Focusing on the relationship between matter and meaning in the artistic production of this period, this event will shed important new light on the diverse ways that a wide range of materials functioned to transform artists’ and viewers’ understanding of the fundamental significance of art objects.

Despite the fact that the materiality of nineteenth-century art has been long overlooked by the discipline, the period was in fact a particularly consequential one in the history of the matter of art, that is, in how artists materials were produced, used, and understood.  To give some examples, the manufacture of materials underwent radical change during this time, with synthetic ingredients such as pigments first being discovered and coming increasingly into use; the market for artists’ materials vastly expanding during the period, in part as a result of the rise of the hobbyist artist; the increasing technical and stylistic experimentation of artists working in the second half of the century included an emphasis on the innovative treatment of their media and the role of materials in the meaning of their work; and the rise of professional art conservation and restoration as a field, along with the creation of the institution of the public museum, to name just some of the fundamental changes in the matter of art, its treatment, and its reception during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, pivotal developments of the period such as industrialization, urbanization, increasing colonial expansion,  political revolutions, the rise of the nation-state, the growth and abolition of slavery, and the burgeoning global trade and travel networks likewise define the nineteenth century as a period whose many major developments continue to shape the world today.  This symposium seeks to illuminate the significant changes taking place with regard to the matter of art in the nineteenth century and link artists’ materials to meaningful developments, phenomena, and debates unfolding outside of the art world. 

An important aspect of this symposium is to explore the distinct treatment and interpretations of artists materials by makers, users, and viewers in different regions, cultures, and countries around the globe.  Aiming to analyze questions of making, materiality, and meaning from a partially cross-cultural perspective, this symposium will bring together scholars whose research engages with diverse artistic practices, objects, and traditions. Relatedly, this gathering will illuminate the potential significance of the mobility of artists’ materials across borders and continents, the geo-politics of the extraction of and trade in artists’ materials, and the ways in which access to materials of foreign origin fundamentally altered both the production and reception of art works around the world.

Another goal of a symposium is to foreground how the materiality of nineteenth-century art affected the intersections of art, environment, and ecology during this time.  Participants will, for example, analyze the significance of the origins of much of the matter of art in the organic and mineral matter of the earth and the far-reaching impact of the emergence of synthetically derived artists’ media.  Relatedly, speakers will engage closely with the relationship between art and increasingly prominent environmental considerations and challenges of the time.  In what ways did the materials of art enable artists to pictorially engage with the effects of industrialization, pollution, and other perceived forms of environmental degradation?

The rise of both the public museum and the profession of art restoration over the course of the nineteenth century had profound consequences for debates about the stability and longevity of the matter of art and for shifting public perceptions of the role of museums as caretakers of historical objects.  Furthermore, the symposium will examine the different modes of transmission of knowledge of  artists’ materials from earlier periods as well as artists’ perceptions of the historical specificity of various media.  In all these ways, the symposium will illuminate nineteenth-century considerations of the temporality of the matter of art: in the making of the work, in its controversial restoration, and by examining artists’ and viewers’ attitudes towards materials as embodiments of the relationship between the past and the present and between artistic tradition and innovation.

Finally, this symposium hopes to bring to light how artists’ materials were treated in the writings on art of the nineteenth century.  Participants will analyze the various ways that critics, art historians, and theorists positioned the matter of art in their interpretations of specific objects and in their narratives of the history, evolution, and identity of the discipline of art history.

The symposium features some of the leading art historians in the world, who represent different facets of the field and diverse methodological perspectives.  They constitute a geographically diverse group, coming from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and the United States. 

Participants:

Carol Armstrong (Yale)

Ann-Sophie Lehmann (Groningen)

Barbara Jouves-Hann (École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay)

Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Harvard)

Prita Meier (Institute of Fine Arts/New York University)

Noémie Etienne (Vienna)

Richard Taws (University College London)

Michelle Foa (Tulane University)

 

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Jun
6
8:00 AM08:00

Workshop: Paper in 19th-Century Europe

I’ll be presenting a brief talk on the effect that popular photography had on the environment. In the late 19th century, the first Kodak camera was introduced and with it, roll film; suddenly, photographers no longer needed to carry giant glass plates and heavy equipment into streets or woods or wars. Photographic journalism became the hot currency of modern reportage. To show off these images, magazines like National Geographic demanded the whitest paper they could find. This workshop will discuss the type of paper made, how it was made, with a focus on who made that paper and the legacies its production left behind.

Workshop: Paper in 19th-Century Europe

The 19th century witnessed dramatic changes in the production and consumption of paper that crossed both disciplinary and geographic boundaries. This workshop aims to bring together scholars in different disciplines, as well curators, conservators, and others who have engaged in the topic to explore more closely the make-up and meaning of paper during this period. How did artists and/or writers understand the shifts taking place, and in what ways might they have addressed them in their work? What discoveries have been made about the production and material composition of paper produced during this time? What important aspects of paper’s use in non-literary or artistic contexts have not yet received sufficient attention? What might we learn from thinking about 19th-century paper from an environmental perspective? How might considering the production and consumption of paper from the perspective of gender yield new insights?

Conveners:
Michelle Foa, Tulane University
Cary Hollinshead-Strick, American University Paris

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Mar
28
12:00 PM12:00

LIVE: Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lecture Series, Tufts

Ecologies of a Small New England Town: Paper, People, Politics

The fundamental need for bodies to be respected has always been at odds with industry’s goals. History has shown these abuses to be true, from the cotton fields of Virginia to the paper mill towns of rural Maine. Yet people continue to work in such industries and the communities they live in endure, despite the knowledge (and the toxics) they accrue. Arsenault will discuss how our external landscapes inscribe themselves on our internal landscapes— and the reverse, and how power, politics, family, and love shape our choices, or lack thereof.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 12-1 pm EST  
Location: Tufts University, Curtis Hall Multipurpose Room (474 Boston Avenue, Medford, MA)  

Online Viewer Livestream Registration – Mar 28

Every week during the academic year, the Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lectures feature speakers from government, industry, academia, and non-profit organizations to give presentations on environmental topics at Tufts University.

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Feb
7
7:30 PM19:30

LIVE: Nonfiction Dialogues, Columbia University

About the Nonfiction Dialogues:

The Nonfiction Dialogues is an evening literary series in which Professor and Writing Program Chair Lis Harris discusses with distinguished nonfiction writers their work and careers. Recent guests have included Emily Bernard, Peter Godwin, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Jelani Cobb, Lacy Johnson, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Maggie Nelson.

Join Lis and I in conversation on Feb. 7 at 501 Dodge Hall - Details here

https://arts.columbia.edu/events/nonfiction-dialogues-kerri-arsenault

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Jan
29
3:30 PM15:30

ZOOM: Biotechnology and Society, UCLA

I’ll be talking to students enrolled in a year-long, interdisciplinary course at UCLA, titled Biotechnology and Society about Mill Town, which is one of the required texts for their "epigenetics and environmental exposures" unit. This is a unit which includes earlier lectures on basics of epigenetics (critiques, debates, mechanistic details), food as exposure; microbiome research, bioethics and the politics of various interpretations of "cure" in scientific study of environmental exposures; and storytelling around environmental exposures. 

This 240-student course engages with controversial topics in current science through the lenses of biology, gender and sexuality studies and food studies, anthropology, sociology and public policy. We think that your book will be an incredible addition to the course, and truly embodies the interdisciplinary dimensions of environmental storytelling, and debates within science, technology and society we are trying instill in our students, who are primarily pre-science. 

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Jan
22
1:00 PM13:00

ZOOM: Williams College

I’ll be talking with Rye Howard’s class, The Toxic Legacy of Local History: Industrialization, Deindustrialization, and Environmental Justice. Rye was a tremendous help in my own research for Mill Town and holds doctoral and MPH degrees in environmental public health, and has extensive teaching and policy experience. Rye is a staff scientist at ELAW, an NGO providing legal and scientific assistance to environmental defenders worldwide. Here’s a description of the class:

The history of industrialization in the northern Berkshires provides a remarkable illustration of the forces of that have shaped American society over the last two centuries. In this course, we will examine a number of local case studies that illustrate these forces and their outcomes, with particular attention to the history of North Adams. We will investigate and discuss, – How the needs of industry determined the location and the subsequent economic development of North Adams; – The transition from nineteenth to twentieth century industrial production, with particular attention to the dramatic increase in sophistication of products and the toxicity of the waste stream; – The connection between immigration, labor, and unionization, exemplified by the recruitment of Chinese immigrants to North Adams to break a strike; – The rise of environmental regulation and the rapid exportation of hazardous industries to developing nations, leaving industrial cities like North Adams with almost no economic basis; – The toxic legacy of our industrial past: A housing stock heavily contaminated by lead paint; a neighborhood razed because of contaminated groundwater, and a river so polluted that fish caught it in can’t be eaten. The course will highlight the local and global environmental justice and public health consequences of the different phases of industrialization, and will consider approaches to mitigating some of these impacts.

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Dec
6
6:00 PM18:00

LIVE: Freeman's Conclusions

Freeman’s: Conclusions with John Freeman, Kerri Arsenault, Hannah Lillith Assadi, and Emily Raboteau, Wednesday December 6th, 2023 @ 6:00PM - 7:00 PM

https://houseofbooksct.com/events

Join us for a discussion of the final issue of John Freeman's influential literary magazine, this volume called Freeman's: Conclusions. Select contributors will read from their work and then engage in a panel discussion with editor John Freeman.

JOHN FREEMAN was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include Dictionary of the Undoing, How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Americas, and Tales of Two Planets. His poetry includes the collections Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. In 2021, he edited the anthologies There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love with Tracy K. Smith, and The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story. An executive editor at Knopf, he also hosts the California Book Club, a monthly online discussion of a new classic in Golden State literature for Alta magazine. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review and has been translated into twenty-two languages.

HANNAH LILLITH ASSADI teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Her first novel, Sonora, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, came out in 2022 to great acclaim. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

EMILY RABOTEAU is the author of The Professor's Daughter, Searching for Zion, winner of the American Book Award, and Lessons for Survival, forthcoming next spring. She's a contributing editor at Orion magazine and a professor of creative writing at the City College of New York. She lives in the Bronx.

KERRI ARSENAULT is a literary critic, co-director of The Environmental Storytelling Studio at Brown University; associate at the Mahindra Center at Harvard; contributing editor at Orion magazine; and author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Her writing has been published in the Boston Globe, The Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Freeman’s, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

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Nov
9
7:00 PM19:00

LIVE: Freeman's w/John Freeman, Kendra Greene, David Searcy

  • !00 West Artist and Writer Residency (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Coming to Conclusions (and coming to Texas): a Decade of Freeman’s

For the past ten years, the literary annual Freeman's has highlighted some of the best new writing from around the world, grouped around themes of importance, from power to love to change. And now, for its final issue, conclusions.

What does it mean to stop in a time where endless expansion is often prized -- personally, institutionally? How do we live a life that makes room for ceremonies of conclusions, without the narrowing effect of coming to conclusions?

Join editor John Freeman with contributors and 100 W resident alumni A. Kendra Greene, Kerri Arsenault and 100 W residency co-founder David Searcy as they read, discuss and celebrate the 10 years of coming together around great writing and conversation in Freeman's. Reception to follow.

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Oct
7
12:00 PM12:00

LIVE: Heartland Book Festival, KC, MO

Memoir and history are often seen as separate genres, shelved in different sections, one in which the author fades to the background as they write about past events, the other a deeply personal take on the author’s own life. But when authors blend these genres, remarkable narratives emerge, showing how the past reverberates into the present and future. Join Kate Carpenter, host of the Drafting the Past podcast, along with me, Arsenault, Erika Bolstad (Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her), Staci Drouillard (Walking the Old Road: A People’s History of Chippewa City and the Grand Marais Anishinaabe and Seven Aunts), and Vivian Gibson (The Last Children of Mill Creek) as we discuss our experiences writing about personal connections to the past.

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Oct
2
6:30 PM18:30

LIVE: conversation w/Ben Fountain

I’ll be in conversation with Ben Fountain about DEVIL MAKES THREE a brilliant and propulsive new novel about greed, power, and American complicity set in Haiti in 1991. 

PRAISE

“Devil Makes Three is the sort of expansive, heartbreaking, thrilling novel I didn't realize I was missing until it grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. Writing at the peak of his considerable powers, Ben Fountain makes a harrowing period in Haiti's recent history come wonderfully and tragically alive. This morally complex novel is why we read fiction." —Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins

“Devil Makes Three brings the relentless intimacy of great literature to the quest to understand Haiti, and in this sense the novel is both an act of wild faith and an act of mad love and, finally, a triumph.” —Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and The Immaculate Invasion

"Devil Makes Three is a fast and riveting read, a gripping thriller braided with a couple of credible love stories. This novel will pin your ears back with some of its hard-won truths." —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising

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Sep
20
3:00 PM15:00

LIVE: Keynote speaker, LOC/NEH

I will be speaking at the National Digital Newspaper Program’s (NDNP) Annual Meeting, hosted jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress.

The NDNP produces Chronicling America, the largest, opened source of historical newspapers produced in the United States, and it’s what I aim to discuss — newspapers and how I used them to write my book.

The live event will be closed to the public, but if can watch it via ZOOM. Registration is HERE

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Sep
6
8:00 PM20:00

LIVE: conversation w/Christina Gerhardt

On 9/6 at 6:30 pm at RJ JULIA in Madison, CT I’ll be in conversation with Christina Gerhardt about her new book SEA CHANGE: AN ATLAS OF ISLANDS IN A RISING OCEAN, which examines islands and how physical landscapes and cultures adapt to the current and projected effects of sea-level rise.

MORE INFORMATION HERE:

About Christina:
Christina Gerhardt is an associate professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. and former fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Before that, she worked as a Barron Professor in the Environment and the Humanities at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. She is a senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, where she previously taught. Professor Gerhardt has been awarded fellowships by various institutions and commissions, including the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library, and the Rachel Carson Center. She has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the Free University Berlin, and Columbia University.


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Aug
27
6:00 PM18:00

LIVE: conversation w/Jennifer Lunden

Join me in conversation at TWENTY STORIES w/ Jennifer Lunden about her book, American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back To Life

This event is free and open to all!

ABOUT AMERICAN BREAKDOWN:

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.

When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just depressed.”

After suffering from this enigmatic illness for five years, she discovered an unlikely source of hope and healing: a biography of Alice James, the bright, witty, and often bedridden sibling of brothers Henry James, the novelist, and William James, the father of psychology. Alice suffered from a life-shattering illness known as neurasthenia, now often dismissed as a “fashionable illness.”

In this meticulously researched and illuminating debut, Lunden interweaves her own experience with Alice’s, exploring the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism to tell a riveting story of how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.

Although science—and the politics behind its funding—has in many ways let Lunden and millions like her down, in the end science offers a revelation that will change how readers think about the ecosystems of their bodies, their communities, the country, and the planet.

ABOUT JENNIFER LUNDEN

The recipient of the 2019 Maine Arts Fellowship for Literary Arts and the 2016 Bread Loaf–Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction, Jennifer Lunden writes at the intersection of health and the environment. Her essays have been published in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Longreads, and other journals; selected for several anthologies; and praised as notable in Best American Essays. A former therapist, she was named Maine’s Social Worker of the Year in 2012.

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Jul
6
to Jul 9

Rachel Carson Visiting Scholar, Chatham University

Chatham University’s Falk School of Sustainability and Creative Writing program have invited me to serve as part of a new initiative at Chatham—the Rachel Carson Visiting Scholars Program. I’ll be teaching a 4-day master class in writing, during the MFA program's Summer Community of Writers program. Carson was a graduate of Chatham College for Women, and much of their programming in the MFA program and across the university, grows from her ethic of care for the environment and interest in how humans connect to it.

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Apr
28
5:00 PM17:00

LIVE and LIVESTREAM: Mill Town: A panel

If you plan to attend in-person, Registration is required. RSVP not required for Livestream. Go to YouTube @mindichprogram at 5pm on April 28

“Meet Mill Town: A Roundtable” brings together students I’ve been working with at Harvard with guests from my book and the mill towns of Rumford and Mexico, Maine: Maddy Arsenault, Jim Aylward, Marie Therese (Terry) Martin, and Lisa Russell.

Together, the roundtable will explore questions of community, ecology, and inequality in America.

Maddy Arsenault is my mother and a longtime resident of Mexico and now lives in Freeport, ME; Jim Aylward is the former guidance counselor and former Head Coach of the high school football team at Mountain Valley High; Marie Therese (Terry) Martin is the author of And Poison Fell From the Sky and a former nurse; and Lisa Russell teaches high school math at Mountain Valley High School

The roundtable will be facilitated by undergraduate student discussants Alex White (’23, Government and Public Policy), Jana Amin (’25), and Katie Catulle (’24, English), Aeden Marcus('25, Environmental Science, Engineering), and Eshan Vishwakarma ('26).

This event is sponsored by the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship.

The Harvard University media relations policy outlines that the press is not permitted to film or cover events on campus. If individuals attending Harvard sponsored events meet someone or hear something as an attendee that they would like to pursue as a journalist they should contact the Harvard communications team (collegecomms@fas.harvard.edu) to discuss options.

Also journalists, per the above, you can also write to me and I’ll talk about anything!!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-mill-town-a-roundtable-tickets-602817141297

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Apr
26
6:00 PM18:00

LIVE: The Environment Forum, Harvard University

“Toxic Discourses: Hope and Hazards in Environmental Storytelling” - I’ll be in conversation with Dr. Genevieve Gunther at the Mahindra Center for the Humanities at Harvard University.

Dr. Genevieve Guenther is an author, climate activist, and native New Yorker. An expert in climate communication and fossil-fuel disinformation, she is the founding director of End Climate Silence and affiliate faculty at The New School, where she sits on the board of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. Dr. Guenther advises activist groups, corporations, and policymakers, and she serves as an Expert Reviewer for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Her next book, The Language of Climate Politics, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

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Apr
13
5:00 PM17:00

LIVE: Conversations in Science, Belmont Hill School

The annual “Conversations in Science” symposium gathers teachers from area public and independent schools for an evening of collegiality and science at Belmont Hill School, an independent school for boys grades 7-12. I’m hosted by environmental science teachers, John McAlpin and Maine native, Tyson Trautz!

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Apr
6
7:00 PM19:00

LIVE: Keynote for The Trustees, Harvard Club New York

I’ve been invited to talk to New York area supporters of The Trustees on April 6th at the Harvard Club. The Trustees is one of the oldest land trusts in the world and the largest in Massachusetts. They own and manage 27,000 acres on 123 separate reservations across the state, and have 100,000 household members and about 2.5 million visitors per year.

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Mar
22
to Mar 26

LIVE: When Archives are Closed or Hidden, What Next? ASEH, Boston.

Join me, Jess Varner, Gregg Mitman, Rebecca Altman, Bartow Elmore, and Ellen Spears for our panel at the 2023 conference for American Society for Environmental History at the Hilton in Boston’s Back Bay. — "When Archives are Closed or Hidden, What Next? Taking on Environmental Histories of Corporate Worlds." Registration opens fall 2022, HERE.

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