Panel Features Faculty Developers of New Institute for Nature and Culture

“Biography of Landscape” is the topic of a panel discussion to be held at DePaul University Oct. 19 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the John T. Richardson Library, 2350 N. Kenmore Ave., Room 417.

The panel will explore the ways in which people have interacted with their environment in the greater Chicago area by examining the histories of three distinct landscapes: Jackson Park located along a stretch of Chicago’s lakefront between 63rd Street and Marquette Road; Curtis Prairie, the oldest restored prairie in the world, located at the University of Wisconsin’s Arboretum in Madison; and the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Joliet, Ill.

Panelists are: William Jordan III, co-director of DePaul’s new Institute for Nature and Culture (INC) and director of the New Academy for Nature and Culture, a Chicago organization that focuses on the development of ecological restoration; Richard Short, a landscape architect at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie; and Barbara Willard, associate professor of communication and environmental policy at DePaul. The discussion will be moderated by Liam Heneghan, DePaul associate professor of environmental science and co-director of the INC.

The university’s INC draws from faculty in DePaul’s environmental science, urban ecology and public policy programs, as well as researchers, conservationists and the general public, to explore new ways to sustain a relationship between humans and nature. “The institute is a response both to what we regard as a crisis of vision and leadership within environmentalism and to the opportunities emerging in urban ecology and environmental restoration pioneered in the Chicago metropolitan area,” said Heneghan.

The panel discussion is being held in conjunction with a DePaul Art Museum exhibition “The Biography of Landscape: Jackson Park,” a photographic depiction of the park’s landscape. The museum is also located at 2350 N. Kenmore Ave.

The panel discussion and the exhibition are free and open to the public. For more information on the panel discussion or the Institute for Nature and Culture, please contact DePaul’s environmental science department at 773/325-7447.