The Visual West

FAIN: EH-301396-24

University of Oklahoma, Norman (Norman, OK 73019-3003)
Kathleen A. Brosnan (Project Director: February 2024 to present)
Emily C Burns (Co Project Director: July 2024 to present)
Kalenda Eaton (Co Project Director: July 2024 to present)

A four-week residential Institute for 25 college and university faculty on visual imagery, material culture, and conceptions of the American West in Norman, Oklahoma.

"Visual Wests" is a four-week Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty to be held at the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 2025. The Institute reexamines the visual imagery and material culture that shaped ideas about the American West since the nineteenth century. The West that emerges - which we center - pays greater attention to the complexities of Indigeneity, race, gender, sexuality, and nature and to new methods of interpreting and communicating research in visible forms. In doing so, we recapture the stories of people too often marginalized in or erased from traditional narratives. Guided by an interdisciplinary faculty, the Institute draws on OU's rich archival and museum resources such as the Western History Collections, Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Jacobson House Native Arts Center, Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, and Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of the Art of the American West.