Living Beyond Lament:
George Catlin's Vanishing America
By Kurt Gutjahr
The Center of the American West welcomed Environmental Ethicist and Western State University Professor John Hausdoerffer to the University of Colorado at Boulder Campus for a discussion of one of the historic West's best-known artists and the world he inhabited. In a far-ranging presentation, Professor Hausdoerffer looked at the career of George Catlin, examining how his perspectives on landscape, Native Americans, and western expansion held at its core a romantic, isolationist understanding of the human relationship to wilderness. Professor Hausdoerffer went on to examine how this perspective - one dominated by a sense of disappearance - has remained a cornerstone of our discussions of the natural environment. In the end, Hausdoerffer challenged the audience to reimagine our connection to wilderness, asking us to embrace the relationship as dynamic and constantly evolving.
