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Nicholas’ presentation begins by introducing Audubon’s biography, his career decision to abandon his merchant vocation and commit to his massive ornithological project, and his book The Birds of America, then focuses on his outdoor experiences tracking birds and philosophically examines some of his beautiful bird paintings-a leitmotif being his sense for the vitality of these little spirited creatures.

Picture: American Robin by John James Audubon

Nicholas Guardiano, Ph.D.

Nicholas Guardiano, Ph.D., is the Alwin C. Carus Archivist and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he specializes in American transcendentalism and pragmatism (esp. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Peirce), metaphysics, aesthetics, philosophy of nature, semiotics, and nineteenth-century American art. His latest book in progress, John James Audubon in Illinois: Artistic Rambles on an American Frontier, provides the historical (Illinois and colonial), biographical, and geological contexts of John James Audubon’s treks around frontier Illinois (1810-1819), as the Illinois countryside was transitioning from a remote backwaters to an established wing of the U.S. Nick visited sites that Audubon did while portaging from the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, including several geological landforms supporting a diversity of wildlife. Lewis & Clark mention catching a catfish in the Mississippi River at the location where Audubon camped 7 years later, that weighed 128 pounds!!! Other explorers collaborate Audubon’s accounts about native Americans, wolves, bear, and the infamous “hauling of the cordelles” up the Mississippi where one would be lucky to traverse 10 miles after a full day of drudgery.