Dr Nicholas Robbins

Biography:

Nicholas Robbins teaches the history of art and visual culture in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. His research focuses on the ecological and scientific significance of art, with particular attention to histories of landscape, photography, and racial formation. His current book project examines how climate emerged as a central subject of scientific observation and aesthetic experimentation in the nineteenth century.

Research Projects:

  • Oceans of Air: Landscape and Climate in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, book manuscript in progress (working title).
  • ‘Ruskin, Whistler, and the Climate of Art in 1884’, in Ruskin’s Ecologies, eds. Kelly Freeman and Thomas Hughes (Courtauld Books Online, forthcoming in 2021).
  • ‘Rock-Bound: Fitz Henry Lane in 1862’, Oxford Art Journal (forthcoming in 2021).
  • ‘The Aerial Image’, conference organized with Emily Doucet, Matthew Hunter, and Jennifer Raab, Yale History of Art Department/Yale Environmental Humanities, April 2019.
  • Co-author, Picturesque and Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Trans-Atlantic Inheritance (Thomas Cole National Historic Site; Yale University Press, 2018).

Teaching:

  • HART0080: ‘Changes in the Landscape: Empire, Industry, Environment’ (currently offered)
  • HART0081: ‘Art and Science in Britain, 1750–1900’, (currently offered)

nicholas robbins