Thesis:   While the subject of landscape art in the US mirrors the interests of its time, painters and photographers have consistently been at least as concerned with formal matters as with pictorial representation.
 

•  Subjects
• Cole and Eastern Romanticism
• Bierstadt and Western Expansion
• Adams and "nature": Sierra Club photography
• Diebenkorn, [and Hockney?]: streetscapes and mapping:  California modernity

Formal concerns

• Cole, Bierstadt and artistic education:  the influence of European models: Claude Lorrain; 19c German landscape painting.
• Adams and classic modernism: compare the formalism of Weston
• Diebenkorn [and Hockney?]:  modern life and fragmentary sensibility

• Conclusion:  Speculate on relative importance of subject and formal features in painting.

Question:  How did the Shakers manage to maintain communal farms for over 200 years?
 

• Intro:  The history of "intentional communities" in the US from 19c utopias to 20c communes.  Life-spans.  Reasons for failures (and successes).

• The Shakers:  History of the sect and its communities.

• Development:  What made the Shakers different?
• Up-to-date and innovative farming practices
• Strong religious belief and active worship
•  Strict rules
•  Supportive, secure community
• Balance between self-sufficiency and market adaptations
• No sex
• Concluding questions and answers
• Why did the Shakers eventually die out?
• What lessons does their experience hold for modern experiments in communal living?