READING AMERICAN

LANDSCAPES AND CITYSCAPES

In this PRACTICE SESSION we shall embark on a visual approach
to Anglophone America while we learn how to read natural,
social and mythical landscapes as well as a selection of relevant
cityscapes
 GETTING STARTED
 As well as poems, songs, novels, films, paintings, and buildings landscapes and
cityscapes can also be “read” as cultural texts. In addition, they are a plentiful
source of background information.
 Landscapes and cityscapes are also constantly being read by scholars and artists,
which also makes them an interesting target of cultural analysis.
 Let’s consider the label “American landscape”: what does it evoke?
 And how about the example below?

Charles
Scheeler,
American
Painting
(1930).
 M AKING & READING SPACE

 The transformation of SPACE into LANDSCAPE or CITYSCAPE is

not a “natural” process, but the result of a complex social
construction.

 Landscapes and cityscapes are SOCIAL PRODUCTS that result from

the “magnetic interaction” between events and people (with
gender, class, race and status differentiation) at a certain place.

 Every society produces a certain space, its own space. Thus BY

READING landscapes and cityscapes we can learn a great deal
about that society.
 B ASIC TERMINOLOGY

Absolute space: physical space independent of what

occupies it.
Landscape: an extensive area of land regarded as being
visually distinct.
Cultural landscape: A landscape that people have
modified.
Cityscape: the visual appearance of a city or urban
area; a city landscape.

Mt. McKinley (Denali)

 F ROM NATURAL SPACE TO CULTURAL
LANDSCAPE IN THE C ARIBBEAN

NY Times travel: Six Caribbean Generic Caribbean beach wallpaper.

beaches to see before you die.
 C ULTURAL LANDSCAPES AND HISTORY

St Lucia

Nisbet plantation resort Slave huts village

 A MERICA :
A LAND OF OPEN NATURAL SPACES
 M AKING “A MERICAN ” LANDSCAPES

Rocky Mountains, Wyoming

Vermont: Fall foliage

 M AKING “A MERICAN ” LANDSCAPES

Anchorage, Alaska

Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii

 A MERICAN C ULTURAL L ANDSCAPES

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Hoover Dam, Arizona-Nevada

 N ATURAL VS C ULTURAL
LANDSCAPES

Everglades National Park, Florida

Bonita Bay, Florida

“A MERICAN ” CITYSCAPES

New York street

Los Angeles freeway
 “A MERICAN ” CITYSCAPES

Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Central Park, New York City

 “A MERICAN ” CITYSCAPES

Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

New Orleans, Louisiana

NATURAL SPACE PRESERVED

http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national-parks/
 Making
landscape
for tourists

Important Safety Tips

For Yellowstone Park
 S PACE , LANDSCAPE , CITYSCAPE ?

Grand Canyon, Arizona

A MERICAN LANDSCAPES AND
CULTURAL REPRESENTATION
 A MERICAN MYTHICAL
SPACES

US: The West

Canada: The North

 T HE CONQUEST OF SPACE
IN THE A MERICAN IMAGINARY

George Caleb Bingham, Daniel Boone

Albert Bierstadt, Indians Spear Fish Escorting Settlers through Cumberland Gap
Emmanuel Leutze, Westward the Course
of Empire Takes Its Way (1861)
John Gast, American Progress (1872)
Frederic Remington, A Dash for the Timber
(1889)
A ND SO THE WEST WAS WON
 F ILMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF
THE “A MERICAN ” LANDSCAPE

Monument Valley Navajo Country, John Ford Point

Utah and Arizona
The
American
West of
John Ford
Monument
Valley Tours