Welcome to the garden and jungle
Students, former students and business professionals poured into a conference room at the Eccles Conference Center at 3 p.m. Wednesday to hear Alan Johnson’s lecture on the landscape of British India.
Johnson is a professor at Idaho State University.
Johnson, born and raised in India, began the lecture by showing slides of Gothic, Victorian and British influence structures found throughout India. The slides illustrated “powerful images that have been recycled.”
“The main point of the lecture is to show part of a larger project,” Johnson said.
Johnson went on to explain the “larger project” was the influence Britain had in the landscape of India until India broke free from British rule in the mid 1900s.
Johnson said India now had a chance to be more than “little England,” with its groomed English gardens and man-made lakes. The jungle and the Indian people could then be expressed, he said. India has been referred to as a “master and abuser of design,” Johnson said, due in part to the conflicting architecture and the landscape that surrounded it.
Pallavi Rastogi, assistant professor in English at Utah State University, scheduled Johnson for the lecture. Rastagi said she had heard about Johnson and had read some of his published works in journals such as Common Wealth.
“He was more than willing to come,” Rastogi said.
While some listeners attended to obtain extra credit in classes, such as Matt Herman, a senior majoring in marketing, many of the students attended out of interest.
Jordan Stanely, a senior majoring in English, said, “I am very interested in other cultures and how post India is portrayed.”
Senior Amy Parkin, majoring in English and history, said, “It is interesting to get out of your perspective. You just don’t have that opportunity on campus as much as I would like.”
-stephhafer@cc.usu.edu