Ambient Empire: Ecologies, Colonies, and Natures Vivantes in Modern Paris

My dissertation traces the aesthetic and political meanings embedded within exhibited ecological systems across French art and mass culture. Focused on the period between 1860 and 1940, each chapter of my dissertation explores a different environmental type: greenhouses, aquariums, and colonial-themed gardens. These environments were carefully tailored for the living specimens, but the smells, humidity, and sights inside these novel types of landscapes also became massively popular with audiences in Paris. Artists soon translated these environments' immersive effects, technologies, and lively qualities—like the vibrant brushstrokes in Impressionist greenhouse scenes, the swarming fish in the films of Georges Méliès, or crowded gardens in photomontages of the 1920s.

While at DFK Paris, I plan to pursue archival research related to my fourth and final chapter on surrealism. Surrealists looked back and often parodied the spectacular constructions discussed in my other chapters: collages featured 19th-century prints of greenhouses and aquariums, films borrowed the watery images of early cinema, and anti-imperialist tracts critiqued these very same colonial expositions. Across these artworks, I trace the development of an ecological sensibility—an attention to life and ecological systems that spans Max Ernst’s collages, Man Ray’s films, Salvador Dalí’s installation practices, and various other surrealist media.