The Department of Art History is pleased to announce that Derek Dunlop successfully defended his PhD dissertation on March 21, 2025.
Derek’s dissertation, titled “Intractable Romanticism: Art, Nature, and Practices of the Aesthetic in Three Contemporary Settler Ecologies,” demonstrates how both contemporary art and current approaches to spaces of nature in settler colonial North America carry the layered aesthetic and philosophical legacies of Romanticism. Describing the co-production of ecology and aesthetics at three varyingly “natural” sites in Canada, it approaches these environments as an art historian does works of art, attending to their history, form, and viewership. It argues that attention to the recalcitrance of Romanticism is as essential for understanding contemporary ecological practices in a time of climate crisis and calls for decolonization as it is for analyzing art. In his evaluation the external examiner, Professor James Nisbet from the University of California, Irvine, especially appreciated the dissertation’s “rigor, thoughtfulness, and originality.”
Derek was advised by Professor Kajri Jain and committee members Professors Jordan Bear and Naisargi Dave. Professor Alison Syme served as the internal-external examiner.
Congratulations to Dr. Dunlop and all best wishes for his future endeavours!
