Plant material, agency, and partnerships
Workshop and Botanical Field Trip
As the climate crisis intensifies and global heating accelerates, it is more evident than ever that humans’ wellbeing on earth is inextricably linked with that of the ecosystems we take part in. This awareness has led to an increasing focus on ecological concerns across academia, not only in the natural sciences, but also in the humanities and social sciences.
At this moment, a field of inquiry into plant-human relationships is flourishing. This workshop engages with interdisciplinary approaches to understanding humans’ engagement with plant matter through a focus on seeds and other mechanisms of plant propagation. Ranging from the implications of plant matter in global economic trade flows and conservation efforts to the ways in which we make kin with our vegetal others, the workshop will leverage approaches from global literary and cultural studies, history, and the natural sciences in order to consider the ways in which humans can, do, and perhaps should interact with vegetal matter as we face an era of extinction and radical environmental changes.
Participants
- Åsmund Asdal, Svalbard Global Seed Vault
- Reinaldo Funes Monzote, University of Havana
- Joela Jacobs, University of Arizona
- Emily Jones, Whitman College
- Isabel Kranz, Universität Wien
- Marina Moskowitz, University of Wisconsin
- Mark Nesbitt, Kew Gardens
- Solvejg Nitzke, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Emily Sibley, Whitman College