Overview

Long viewed as a tabula rasa, the deserts of the American West have played a distinct role in the projection of American cultural identities. Historically represented through fantasies of individualism, frontier ruggedness, and land acquisition, the desert is also the site of extreme social and environmental violence. The Invention of the American Desert brings together a wide-ranging group of interdisciplinary essays that explore, through diverse perspectives, dialectical problems posed by an environment that has served as a testing ground for modernist experimentation, military-industrial incursions, and ecological disasters throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In light of the urgent climate crisis and the planet’s increasing desertification, this volume reflects on the nature and legacy of the desert as a crucible for competing visions of land, environment, and art.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lyle Massey ,  James Nisbet
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   0.726kg
ISBN:  

9780520306691

ISBN 10:   0520306694
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   02 November 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Lyle Massey and James Nisbet PART ONE: CONTAMINATION 1. Desolate Dreams  Joseph Masco 2. Air, Wind, Breath, Life: Desertification and Will Wilson’s AIR (Auto-Immune Response) Jessica L. Horton PART TWO: FABRICATION 3. Notes from Bioteknika  Albert Narath 4. Troglodyte Modernists  Lyle Massey 5. Explosive Modernism: Hiram Hudson Benedict's Bouldereign and Zabriskie Point at Fifty Edward Dimendberg PART THREE: INVISIBILITY 6. Point Omega / Omega Point: Desert in Three Parts  Stefanie Sobelle 7. The Desert in Fine Grain Emily Eliza Scott PART FOUR: DYSTOPIA 8. The Desert as Black Mythology  Bridget R. Cooks 9. On the Recalcitrance of the Desert Island, by way of Andrea Zittel's A–Z West James Nisbet CODA 10. Four Theses for the Coming Deserts  Hans Baumann and Karen Pinkus List of Contributors List of Illustrations Index

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Author Information

Lyle Massey is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Picturing Space, Displacing Bodies: Anamorphosis in Early Modern Theories of Perspective and the editor of The Treatise on Perspective: Published and Unpublished. James Nisbet is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s.

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