Art History Prof Barbara Burlison Mooney publishes book chapter, "‘Bearing to Your Senses Sweet Sounds and Odors’: Early Impressions of the Prairie Landscape"

Monday, March 20, 2017

Barbara Burlison Mooney
Barbara Burlison Mooney

University of Iowa Barbara Burlison Mooney has written a chapter in a newly published book, Sound and Scent in the Garden, edited by D. Fairchild Ruggles (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017), 255-93.

Mooney’s chapter, “‘Bearing to Your Senses Sweet Sounds and Odors’: Early Impressions of the Prairie Landscape,” employs early 19th-century primary sources to explore how European visitors and settlers experienced the Midwestern tallgrass landscape through sound, scent, and vision. Mooney also discusses how these sensate impressions were and were not inflected by issues of class and gender.

Mooney is an associate professor in the School of Art & Art History, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.