About
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is an exhibition featuring selections from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection and beyond. The materials and objects included in the exhibition represent a reckoning with some of the planet’s most pressing concerns, from climate change to biodiversity loss, through humanistic inquiry.
Staged in the CWAC Exhibitions space on the 2nd floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center during Winter Quarter 2024 in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Landau and students in the Methods in Environmental Humanities seminar offered by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), the exhibition foregrounds an interdisciplinary lens through which the contributors approach the environmental humanities. Students interrogate how humanistic disciplines such as art history, Indigenous studies, animal studies, comparative literature, and history serve as emerging methods through which we might understand the environment. Collectively, the student curators contemplate our everyday relationships with the built environment, natural resources, and stolen land through humanistic lines of inquiry.
To demonstrate how an interpretation can change depending on the methodological approach used or theoretical lens applied to an object, student curators were asked to produce two distinct labels using at least two different methodologies. To read both labels, as well as student explanations of their methodological approaches, click on an image from the exhibition.
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is co-curated by Dr. Jessica Landau and student curators from her Winter 2024 Methods in the Environmental Humanities seminar: Yufei Chen (AB’26, Comparative Literature), Jess Senger (AB’24, Environmental Science [major] & Environmental and Urban Studies [minor]), Damary Alvarez (AB’25, Global Studies & Human Rights), Jack McDonald (AB’25, Public Policy & Environmental Science), Mariana Reed (AB’26, Environment, Geography and Urbanization [major] & Education [minor]), Justin Daab (Fellow, Leadership & Society Initiative), and Owen Castle (AB’25, Math & Environmental and Urban Studies).
About
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is an exhibition featuring selections from the Joel Snyder Materials Collection and beyond. The materials and objects included in the exhibition represent a reckoning with some of the planet’s most pressing concerns, from climate change to biodiversity loss, through humanistic inquiry.
Staged in the CWAC Exhibitions space on the 2nd floor of the Cochrane-Woods Art Center during Winter Quarter 2024 in collaboration with Dr. Jessica Landau and students in the Methods in Environmental Humanities seminar offered by the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU), the exhibition foregrounds an interdisciplinary lens through which the contributors approach the environmental humanities. Students interrogate how humanistic disciplines such as art history, Indigenous studies, animal studies, comparative literature, and history serve as emerging methods through which we might understand the environment. Collectively, the student curators contemplate our everyday relationships with the built environment, natural resources, and stolen land through humanistic lines of inquiry.
To demonstrate how an interpretation can change depending on the methodological approach used or theoretical lens applied to an object, student curators were asked to produce two distinct labels using at least two different methodologies. To read both labels, as well as student explanations of their methodological approaches, click on an image from the exhibition.
Objectified: Methods in Environmental Humanities is co-curated by Dr. Jessica Landau and student curators from her Winter 2024 Methods in the Environmental Humanities seminar: Yufei Chen (AB’26, Comparative Literature), Jess Senger (AB’24, Environmental Science [major] & Environmental and Urban Studies [minor]), Damary Alvarez (AB’25, Global Studies & Human Rights), Jack McDonald (AB’25, Public Policy & Environmental Science), Mariana Reed (AB’26, Environment, Geography and Urbanization [major] & Education [minor]), Justin Daab (Fellow, Leadership & Society Initiative), and Owen Castle (AB’25, Math & Environmental and Urban Studies).
Curator: Jess Senger (AB’24, Environmental Science [major] & Environmental and Urban Studies [minor])
Label One
—
L.A. (Laton Alton) Huffman
American artist, 1854-1931
After the Buffalo Chase, North Montana, 1882
Photograph
10 x 8 in
Joel Snyder Materials Collection, 2021.39
—
Hunts like this one, which the photographer Laton Alton Huffman documented and sometimes participated in, contributed to the near eradication of American bison in the late 19th century. As European American settlers moved west, they killed huge numbers of bison, which were vital to the Indigenous tribes living on the Great Plains. Bison were hunted for sport with guns on horseback, which may have been how these three animals were killed. Or, they could have been killed for valuable parts such as their heads, tongues, and hides, evidenced by the severed head in the middle ground. The larger movement of bison hunting was deliberately used to force Indigenous tribes onto reservations, which led to a near eradication of an ancient way of life.
Huffman’s decision to seemingly frame the three dead bison as hunting trophies, with the horses the hunters rode upon in the background, leads the viewer to believe that they were killed not just for sustenance, but as a show of power and control. Today, bison live on in reintroduced herds and as the official mammal of the United States.
—
I used Nicole Shukin’s method of “rendering” for this label. I thought about the effects that the image of bison have on the viewer, both the real ones in the photograph and as a general symbol. The settlers who hunted bison for sport had an interesting conception of bison: they admired their beauty and displayed their heads, but still felt the urge to kill them. I think the concept of a hunting trophy uses both meanings of rendering: the death of a physical animal and a symbol of power and progress. I analyzed different elements in the photograph as symbols of the eradication of the bison and the effects this produced. Bison can also be a positive symbol, since there have been incredible recovery efforts in recent decades. PBS’ timeline was very helpful, and I came across many interesting anecdotes there but couldn’t include them all. It was helpful to learn that Huffman participated in many of these hunts, since that definitely impacted his framing of the photograph.
Label Two
—
L.A. (Laton Alton) Huffman
American artist, 1854-1931
After the Buffalo Chase, North Montana, 1882
Photograph
10 x 8 in
Joel Snyder Materials Collection, 2021.39
—
The snow has just started to melt, and the American bison herd has settled on this plain for a while (there is bison dung scattering the ground). Three or more members of the herd have just been killed by white men on horses with guns. The men came from the east, where there are no bison anymore. For the short time that they exist together, the men use these bison as hunting trophies with valuable tongues and hides but disposable bodies. Eradicating the bison also eradicates the way of life of the Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, the first companions of bison who used them respectfully for sustenance. They fought back and mourned the disappearance of the bison. The horses look away from the bison and at the photographer, companion animals who played a part in this killing. The hunters have moved away from the bison and will gain glory from their trophies but not from their image here. These plains will soon be made into farms for cattle and crops, and the bones of the bison will be ground into fertilizer for the new in-dustry. Decades later, some bison return thanks to humans who recog-nize their importance.
—
I used Anna Tsing’s method of “companion species” for this label. I also tried to write the first label from the perspective of humans, and the second label from the perspective of the bison and horses. I wanted to emphasize how bison and Indigenous people depended on each other to some extent, but white settlers broke this interdependence. I focused on this moment itself more prominently than the larger movement. I thought of how jarring this event would have been for the landscape as a whole and how each group of humans had a different relationship with the bison. I am still puzzled why the hunters do not appear in the photograph, but the effect that the viewer gets is that they are faceless and nameless. I tried to recreate the experience of being on the scene at the time, like Tsing’s use of personal anecdotes. Isenberg’s book chapter was also helpful for this label.
Bibliography
Burns, Ken. 2023. “Multimedia Timeline of the American Buffalo 10,000BC – Today.” PBS. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-american-buffalo/timeline.
Isenberg, Andrew C. 2000. “Introduction.” In The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920, 1-12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame. 2023. “Laton Alton “L.A.” Huffman, Miles City.” Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame. https://montanacowboyfame.org/inductees/2023/3/laton-alton-la-huffman-miles-city.
Shukin, Nicole. 2009. “New Life Forms and Functions of Animal Fetishism.” In Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, 1-47. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
Tsing, Anna. 2012. “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as a Companion Species.” Environmental Humanities 1.