Greene Country Towne

An unconventional history of Philadelphia that operates at the threshold of cultural and environmental studies, A Greene Country Towne expands the meaning of community beyond people to encompass nonhuman beings, things, and forces.By examining a diverse range of cultural acts and material objects created in Philadelphia—from Native American artifacts, early stoves, and literary works to public parks, photographs, and paintings—through the lens of new materialism, the essays in A Greene Country Towne ask us to consider an urban environmental history in which humans are not the only protagonists. This collection reimagines the city as a system of constantly evolving constituents and agencies that have interacted over time, a system powerfully captured by Philadelphia artists, writers, architects, and planners since the seventeenth century. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Maria Farland, Nate Gabriel, Andrea L. M. Hansen, Scott Hicks, Michael Dean Mackintosh, Amy E. Menzer, Stephen Nepa, John Ott, Sue Ann Prince, and Mary I. Unger.

“Performing remarkable syntheses of environmental history and recent materialist cultural theory, the essays in A Greene Country Towne confirm Philadelphia’s centrality to the political, commercial, scientific, artistic, and natural history of the United States. A milestone in the multidisciplinary environmental humanities.”—Michael Ziser, author of Environmental Practice and Early American Literature, “There are moments of wonder and insights scattered throughout, including the English professor Maria Farland’s ecological reading of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and the art historian Laura Turner Igoe’s environmental interpretation of the work of Charles Willson Peale.”—Peter C. Mancall, Winterthur Portfolio

Alan C. Braddock is Ralph H. Wark Associate Professor of Art History and American Studies at the College of William and Mary as well as Barron Visiting Professor in the Environment and the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of Thomas Eakins and the Cultures of Modernity (2009) and coeditor of A Keener Perception: Ecocritical Studies in American Art History (2009).Laura Turner Igoe is the Maher Curatorial Fellow of American Art at Harvard Art Museums. She is completing a book manuscript titled Art and Ecology in the Early Republic.