City University of New York. New York (United States of America)
April 1st, 2011
Summary:
Power–lines examines the intersections between electricity (power-) and landscape (-lines) as they were manifest in American art, literature, science, technology, religion, and philosophy throughout the nineteenth century and into the first part of the twentieth. It alternates between two parallel trajectories. The first line follows “electricity” and “landscape” as defined and circulated by writers such as Samuel Morse, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Nikola Tesla. The second trajectory traces poles and wires as described in American fiction, poetry, landscape painting, and film. Overhead grids were crucial to the development of industries and politics that spanned the continent. The power line framed the way Americans looked at themselves and their environment. Although new grids and nation-spanning networks seemed to unite landscape and electricity in a pastoral equipoise, power–lines have signified the increasingly potent and ambiguous effects of lining our environment (and minds) with wires.
Keywords: Philosophy, religion and theology; Social sciences; Language, literature and linguistics; Electricity; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Landscape; Technology; Telegraph; Tesla, Nikola
Citation:
D.L. Wuebben (2011), Power-lines: electricity, landscape, and the American mind. City University of New York. New York (United States of America).
