Ecocriticism

Image Credit: Matthys Cock (attributed), Landscape with the Martyrdom of Saint Catherine, c. 1540, oil on plywood transferred from poplar, 62 × 118 cm. Washington, National Gallery of Art, Samuel H. Kress Collection, inv. 1952.2.18

 

Since 2022, my scholarship has turned to ecological themes, and I have been working to move early modern art history toward a more ecocritical orientation. My collaborator, Maurice Saß, and I have published an open-access article on the topic: “Toward an Ecocritical History of Early Modern Art.” You can read it here. Since the article appeared, I’ve been fielding questions from colleagues and students about early modern ecocritical art history. I’ve written the FAQ below to address these queries and serve as one of many possible entry points to the topic.

​

What is ecocritical art history?

​

Ecocritical art history examines how art and ecology have shaped each other. It assesses relationships between art and living and non-living agents and forces. It also draws conclusions about the character of that relationality.

 

In addition, ecocritical art history scrutinizes the interplay between art and nature. But it transcends conventional art/nature studies by interrogating “art” and “nature” as historically grounded and ever-shifting concepts. Ecocritical art history asks how art and nature have come to constitute each other.

 

This process had crucial origins in the centuries between 1400 and 1800, often called “early modernity.” We can regard the same period as the origin of shifts that have catalyzed modern planetary ecology and ecological crises. The co-evolution of art and nature amid the onset of ecological modernity potentially implicates every image, object, and space that humans made in this period. For these reasons, I regard ecocritical perspectives to be vital to the history of art in early modernity.

​

Why does early modern ecocritical art history matter?

​

Studying the ecological dimensions of early modern art matters for more than academic reasons. It not only offers valuable insights into the sources of our contemporary ecological and artistic conditions. It can also recover perspectives on art and ecology from the distant past that are profoundly unfamiliar today. Those views can offer ways to transcend the impasse of imagination often identified as a key stumbling block for solving the current eco-crisis. 

​

How can one acquaint oneself with this approach to early modern art history?

​

To start, I recommend reading the scholarship of Tina Asmussen, Daniela Bleichmar, Francesca Borgo, Mónica Domínguez Torres, Ruth Ezra, Christine Göttler, Anna Grasskamp, Christopher P. Heuer, Michael Ann Holly, Joost Keizer, Kristopher Kersey, Dipti Khera, De-nin Deanna Lee, V.E. Mandrij, Mia Mochizuki, Jason Nguyen, Christopher Nygren, James Pilgrim, Renée Raphael, Sugata Ray, Angela Vanhaelen, Thijs Weststeijn, and Rebecca Zorach. Collectively, these scholars cover a wide range of geographies and periods between 1400 and 1800.  Joining the Ulmer Verein group, “Ecologies of Premodern Art” is also a great way to stay informed about new publications and conversations in the field. 

​

Where did the ecocritical history of early modern art come from?

 

One beginning of the ecocritical history of early modern art was the rise of environmental humanities, no later than the 1960s. Another occurred in the 2000s, with the advent of ecoaesthetics and ecophilosophy, as well as ecological impulses in other disciplines of early modern studies, and the ecological reorientation of historians of modern and contemporary art (the last in conversation with ecological currents in contemporary art practice). Ecocritical historians of early modern art can look to each tradition for inspiration, and they are also, increasingly, shaping those fields. 

​

​

​

​​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image Credit: Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with the Remains of a Ship, c. 1623-1625, Line etching and drypoint, printed in black on paper, then colored using lead-based, grayish-blue paint and yellow, purple and white paint, printed framing line at left, top and bottom; varnished, 138 × 202 mm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, On loan from the City of Amsterdam, RP-P-H-OB-819. Artwork and photograph in the public domain.

​

​

​

My Ecocritical Work

​

My ecocritical work extends to leadership and service to art history and early modern studies, as well as my research and teaching. By organizing public conversations and collaborative publications, I am working to bring ecological traditions in different geographic and chronological specializations of art history into closer dialogue with one another. In my roles as an interdisciplinary conference session organizer and Associate Editor of Renaissance Studies, I am also forging conversations between ecocritical scholars of early modern art and ecologically oriented scholars in other disciplines of early modern studies.

 

My research and teaching have a more specific contribution. They seek to renovate the longstanding rapport between art history and the history of science through ecocriticism. Building on the work of premodern and modernist art historians and historians of science who are catalyzing similar reorientations, I am revising the history of the early modern art-science axis to foreground ecological themes. In so doing, I seek to complicate prevailing narratives of ecological innocence and guilt, technological progress, and Enlightenment. By composing and teaching histories of art, science, and ecology before the word “ecology” was conceived in 1866, I challenge conventional configurations of arts, sciences, and humanities as well as entrenched understandings of historicism, anachronism, and temporalities past, present, and future. 

​

​Current Ecocritical Projects

​

Forthcoming Publications

• Ecocriticism of Early Modern Art: Theory, Methods, and Practices in Conversation, a special issue of Selva co-edited with Maurice Saß; publication forthcoming in autumn 2026.

• “The Metabolism of Early Modern Landscape: Ecology and Natural Philosophy in the Prints of Hercules Segers (c. 1589 – c. 1658),” for Imaginaries of the Landscape: Media, Materials, Makers, ed. Christine Göttler and Marie-Theres Stauffer (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter). Publication forthcoming in autumn 2026.

​

Grant

• Cornell Global Hubs Research Seed Grant, Cornell University, for collaborative project with Prof. Chad Córdova on “Renaissance Ecologies, Renaissance Temporalities: Toward a Productive Anachronism for Renaissance Ecological Studies,” (January – December 2026)

 

Conference Activities

• “Connecting Ecocritical Art Histories,” double session at the Association for Art History Conference, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, co-organized with Maurice Saß (upcoming April 2026) 

• “Ecocritical Renaissance Art History Now,” invited remarks for Renaissance art history roundtable, Association for Art History Conference, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (upcoming April 2026)

• “Dürer, Humanism, and Ecology,” in Renaissance Ecologies, 7th Conference for the Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden (upcoming October 2026)

• “Between Central Europe and Potosí: Global and Local in Early Modern Mining,” in “This Must be the Place: Beyond Local/Global Binaries in Ecocritical Art History,” session at Association for Art History Conference, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (upcoming April 2026)

​

Collaborations 

• “Ecocritical Histories of Early Modern Art,” collaboration with Prof. Dr. Maurice Saß (Alanus University) 

• “Renaissance Ecologies, Renaissance Temporalities: Toward a Productive Anachronism for Renaissance Ecological Studies,” collaboration with Dr. Chad Córdova (Cornell University)

 

Publications

 

·      “Toward an Ecocritical History of Early Modern Art,” co-authored as an equal contributor with Maurice Saß (Alanus University, Alfter, Germany), Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 88, no. 4 (December 2025): 457-483. 

o   Nominated by Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte for the Renaissance Society of America Renaissance Studies Article Prize 2026

·      “Renaissance Architectural Culture and Geological Inquiry,” in Synagonism: Theory and Practice in Early Modern Art, ed. Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Markus Rath, and Joris van Gastel (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2024), 421-454. 

 

Talks

 

• “Mining Images, Planetary Networks: Central Europe, Potosí, and the Imperatives of Global-Ecocritical Early Modern Art History” Duke University (March 2025)

• “Mining Images, Planetary Networks: The Erzgebirge, Potosí, and the Imperatives of Global-Ecocritical Early Modern Art History” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (November 2024)

• “Between Potosí and Saxony: Visualizing Architectural Systems of Colonial Resource Extraction,”Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA (February 2023)

• “Visualizing Systems of Resource Extraction in Later Sixteenth-Century Europe: Georgius Agricola vs. Bernard Palissy,” “Ecologies of Early Modern Art,” online workshop hosted by the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Mainz, Germany (November 2022)

​