2024.10.05 Ruskin in America: ‘Over-hopefulness and getting-on-ness’ by Sara Atwood

The Ruskin Art Club, founded 1888, is the oldest cultural association in Los Angeles. It remains dedicated to British art and social critic John Ruskin’s visionary integration of art and societal transformation. For more information, visit our website at www.ruskinartc....
‘Over-hopefulness and getting-on-ness’: Ruskin, Nature, and America by Sara Atwood
Ruskin’s innate love of nature (“the ruling passion of my life”) was strengthened by literary, artistic, and historical associations uniquely connected to longstanding European cultural traditions-traditions that the relatively youthful America lacked. In a similar vein, the American vision of nature depended on leaving the past behind, shedding the very influences Ruskin most valued. This talk will show that despite sharing with them a deep love of nature and sense of its spiritual power, there are fundamental and important differences between Ruskin’s understanding of the natural world and that of influential contemporary Americans such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Muir.
SARA ATWOOD teaches literature and writing at Portland State University and Pacif- ic Northwest College of Art. She also leads Delve literary seminars for Portland Liter- ary Arts. She is the author of Ruskin’s Educational Ideals and has contributed essays to a number of books, including John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education and the Cambridge Companion to William Morris. Her lectures, both in the United States and abroad, have focused particularly on education, the environment, and language. She is a Companion of the Guild of St. George and a board member of the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles.
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