"A Keener Perception" about to appear from Alabama University Press

My friend and long-time collaborator Alan Braddock (Art History, Temple University) and I have completed work on our anthology of ecocritical essays on American art, titled A Keener Perception, a phrase we have borrowed from Thomas Cole. This innovative collection, which seeks to contribute to the "greening" of American art history, will be published in the fall of 2009 by Alabama University Press. To pre-order a copy, go to their website. Featured on the left is Antoine Sonrel's wonderful lithograph of a jellyfish, Cyanea arctica, from Louis Agassiz's Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of America.

Picturing John James Audubon

In just about two weeks, my NEH Summer Institute for Teachers, "Picturing John James Audubon," will begin. For a description of the institute and a preliminary plan of our activities see our website. Audubon was without doubt America's first great artist and nature writer. One aim of the institute will be to recover him as the truly international figure he was--contrary to the many popular readings of him as an exemplary and prototypically American pioneer figure (which are not wrong; they just seem engineered to make us forget what Audubon himself never forgot--that he was a Frenchman by birth, and one born in the Caribbean to boot). Here is the magnificent "White-headed Eagle" from the incomparable set of "Birds of America" owned by the Lilly Library, the location of our institute.

Abolitionism in Black and White

On 24 October I will be participating in a public symposium sponsored by a variety of organizations--the National Park Service, Harvard University and Mass Humanities among them--dedicated to the Anti-Slavery Community of Boston and Cambridge. The symposium owes its impetus done to the pioneer scholarship of the staff of the Longfellow National Historic site, notably its Manager, Jim Shea, who have uncovered so many links between the white and black communities of Boston and Cambridge. Speakers include Lois and James Horton, John Stauffer, David Blight and others. My own contribution will focus on abolitionism in popular culture. For more, check out the wonderful website created for the symposium.

Public Poet, Private Man

The University of Massachusetts Press has now published the companion volume to my award-winning 2007 Longfellow Bicentennial exhibit in a handsome paperback edition. To order, go to their website. The new edition has 67 illustrations, all in full color, from the collections of Houghton Library and the Longfellow National Historic site in Cambridge.