Casid (art history, U. of Wisconsin, Madison) explains how landscaping practices from the eighteenth century became a function of empiricism as well as a justification for it. She maintains that imperial landscaping, whether defined and refined at European capitols, practiced in the colonies, or idealized in novels, reinforced notions of patriarchy, heterosexual reproduction, and social hierarchy. She finds that the creation of a synthetic pastoral environment was a method of confining certain groups, whether as slaves on country plantations or homosexuals in the cities. She also finds that those so confined found ways to resist, for example, in the case of slaves claiming the landscape and seeking its retransformation through the practice of Vodou. Casid provides a number of period illustrations. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)