CHAViC Summer Seminar

Ecology and Empire
Monday, July 20 - Friday, July 24, 2026
Summer Seminars in Historic American Visual Culture
American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States

The 2026 Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) summer seminar will examine the intersections of ecology and empire in the nineteenth-century United States, when environments were sites of cultural encounter, conquest, and resistance. Participants will use an environmental humanities lens to explore topics of US territorial expansion, settler colonialism, and industrial and infrastructural development in both continental and global contexts. Through close study of the American Antiquarian Society’s extensive collections of prints, drawings, photographs, maps, and other primary sources, participants will consider visual representations of nature, including materials extracted from the natural world, that reveal colonial power, persuasion, and resistance.

The seminar will expand on existing accounts of art and empire in the United States by introducing vanguard environmental humanities concepts and methods. Nineteenth-century practices of seeing, recording, and managing the natural world shaped enduring hierarchies of race, gender, and labor. The seminar will foreground transnational and Indigenous frameworks for the production and circulation of ecological knowledge. Participants will study a broad range of themes, including the visual and material culture of scientific expedition, surveying, natural history, extraction, conservation, gardens, and agriculture. Participants will also consider how ecological histories can inform and shape contemporary understandings of nature, stewardship, and belonging.

This interdisciplinary seminar welcomes scholars and professionals from across fields, including American studies, art history, environmental history, history of science, geography, Indigenous studies, visual and material culture, and literary studies, among others. No prior experience in environmental humanities is required. In addition to time spent at AAS, participants will visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum to further expand our investigation of the connections between industry, ecology, and empire in nineteenth-century visual and material culture.

Seminar Leader: Maggie M. Cao
Maggie Cao is associate professor of art history and David G. Frey Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies the visual and material culture of globalization, particularly at the intersections of art, science, and economics in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century United States. Cao has published on media theory, material culture, and ecocriticism in both scholarly journals and on public-facing platforms. She is the author of two books: The End of Landscape in Nineteenth Century America (University of California Press, 2018), and Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025). Her current research focuses on artistic engagements with ecological time. She is also an editor of the interdisciplinary journal Grey Room.
Guest speakers for the seminar will include Stacy Kamehiro (University of California, Santa Cruz), Alan Braddock (College of William and Mary), and other guests to be announced in February.

Participation is intended for graduate students, college and university faculty, librarians, curators, and museum professionals.

Accessibility
CHAViC is committed to creating an environment that welcomes all people and meets their access needs. The AAS library and classroom facilities are wheelchair accessible. Other accommodations may be available upon advance request. Participants are encouraged to indicate any accessibility needs in their applications.

Tuition
Tuition for the five-day seminar is $1,000. This includes meals throughout the week and a day trip to the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Housing
The cost of housing is not included in the tuition fee. Participants will have the option of staying in dormitory housing on the Worcester Polytechnic Institute campus (within easy walking distance of AAS) for approximately $80.00 per night.

Contact
For questions about the seminar, contact John J. Garcia, AAS director of scholarly programs and partnerships, at jgarcia@mwa.org or 508-471-2134.