Vegetal Anima
Why Plant Studies Now?
Will be published approx. on 18. February 2027
Book
Hardback
256 pages
979-8-216-37814-3 (ISBN)
Description
This volume is a critical examination of the sudden burgeoning of plant studies across the
disciplines. From ecocriticism that features fantastical plants, biological studies and concerns
about changing plant biodiversity, environmental focus on the role of plants in mitigating climate
change, neo-liberal campaigns to offset carbon through tree plantings, and popular tropes of
thinking and feeling plants, we see plants as front and center of imaginations for planetary
futures.
As scholars who have tracked the shifting focus from human to animal studies and now
plant studies, we believe something is afoot. We examine the current moment through an
examination of the histories that have brought us here, a theorization of the current moment, and
finally the lessons we can learn through such analyses.
disciplines. From ecocriticism that features fantastical plants, biological studies and concerns
about changing plant biodiversity, environmental focus on the role of plants in mitigating climate
change, neo-liberal campaigns to offset carbon through tree plantings, and popular tropes of
thinking and feeling plants, we see plants as front and center of imaginations for planetary
futures.
As scholars who have tracked the shifting focus from human to animal studies and now
plant studies, we believe something is afoot. We examine the current moment through an
examination of the histories that have brought us here, a theorization of the current moment, and
finally the lessons we can learn through such analyses.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-216-37814-3 (9798216378143)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Dr. Sushmita Chatterjee is Professor and Chair in the Department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, feminist and queer theory, and animal studies. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume Meat! A Transnational Analysis (Duke University Press, 2021), and monograph Postcolonial Hauntings: Play and Transnational Feminism (University of Illinois Press, 2024).
Banu Subramaniam is the Luella LaMer Professor and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. Banu is author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press 2024), Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Banu Subramaniam is the Luella LaMer Professor and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. Banu is author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press 2024), Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Content
Introduction: Invited Roundtable: What is a plant?
Mel Chen, Alison Kafer, Naisargi Dave, Sara Ahmed, Katherine McKittrick, Eva Hayward, Jen Nash, Natasha Myers
Part I: Vegetal Matters
Chapter 1. Site, Sensation, and Subjection: Excavating the Racial Materialities of Tea
Chandrica Barua
Chapter 2. Botanical Phantasmagoria: Critical Biogeography from the Roadside to the Plant Conservatory
Colin Hoag
Chapter 3. Indigenous Cosmological Ecologies, Plant Peoples, and Decolonial Care
Ho'esta Mo'e'hahne
Chapter 4. Trans/Planting Conservation: Multispecies Entanglements in the Galapagos Islands
Jenne Schmidt
Chapter 5. Sugarcane "Improvement" Program and Deskilling of Cultivators in Colonial United Provinces
Azram Rahman Khan
Part II: Vegetal Travels
Chapter 6. Crop wars in Brazil: Towards a counter-colonial ecology
Ana Laura Malmaceda; Alana Moraes, Fabio Zuker; Lucas Maciel, Otavio Penteado
Chapter 7. Tuber Tales: Unearthing the Imperial History of Potatoes in Belarus
Tatsiana Shchurko
Chapter 8. Phragmites australis and Arundo donax: Transnational plant lives and technologies in the socialist Danube Delta
Calin Cotoi
Chapter 9. Spaces of Speculation and Acclimatization of Species: Emplacing the Hevea brasiliensis, 1876-1906
Anirudh Gurumoorthy
Part III: Vegetal Stories
Chapter 10. Tendril, echo, palimpsest: a brief cultural history of the Benjamin Rush Medicinal Garden at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Charis Boke
Chapter 11. The Secret Life of Plants: Botanical Decoloniality and Indian Literature
Elwin Susan John
Chapter 12. On Latex and Celluloid: The Colonial Extraction of Rubber on Film
Nathaniel Zetter
Chapter 13. Beech Trees between Kinship and History in Anna Ospelt's Wurzelstudien (2020), Kim de'l Horizon's Blutbuch (2022), and Nanna Storr-Hansen's Bogetid (2022)
Stefanie Heine
Part IV: Vegetal Epistemologies
Chapter 14. Algorithmic Plant Justice: Vegetal Beings and the Governing of Precision Agriculture in South Africa
Laura Foster
Chapter 15. Rooted like a Tree: Vegetal epistemology in German tree-sitting activism
Claudia Terragni
Chapter 16. Constructing a "Harmonious Society" of Nonnative Future Forests
Mariko Whitenack
Chapter 17. Being the Edge: Coral Reefs and other Trans Life
Dylan McCarthy Blackston and Abraham B. Weil
Mel Chen, Alison Kafer, Naisargi Dave, Sara Ahmed, Katherine McKittrick, Eva Hayward, Jen Nash, Natasha Myers
Part I: Vegetal Matters
Chapter 1. Site, Sensation, and Subjection: Excavating the Racial Materialities of Tea
Chandrica Barua
Chapter 2. Botanical Phantasmagoria: Critical Biogeography from the Roadside to the Plant Conservatory
Colin Hoag
Chapter 3. Indigenous Cosmological Ecologies, Plant Peoples, and Decolonial Care
Ho'esta Mo'e'hahne
Chapter 4. Trans/Planting Conservation: Multispecies Entanglements in the Galapagos Islands
Jenne Schmidt
Chapter 5. Sugarcane "Improvement" Program and Deskilling of Cultivators in Colonial United Provinces
Azram Rahman Khan
Part II: Vegetal Travels
Chapter 6. Crop wars in Brazil: Towards a counter-colonial ecology
Ana Laura Malmaceda; Alana Moraes, Fabio Zuker; Lucas Maciel, Otavio Penteado
Chapter 7. Tuber Tales: Unearthing the Imperial History of Potatoes in Belarus
Tatsiana Shchurko
Chapter 8. Phragmites australis and Arundo donax: Transnational plant lives and technologies in the socialist Danube Delta
Calin Cotoi
Chapter 9. Spaces of Speculation and Acclimatization of Species: Emplacing the Hevea brasiliensis, 1876-1906
Anirudh Gurumoorthy
Part III: Vegetal Stories
Chapter 10. Tendril, echo, palimpsest: a brief cultural history of the Benjamin Rush Medicinal Garden at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Charis Boke
Chapter 11. The Secret Life of Plants: Botanical Decoloniality and Indian Literature
Elwin Susan John
Chapter 12. On Latex and Celluloid: The Colonial Extraction of Rubber on Film
Nathaniel Zetter
Chapter 13. Beech Trees between Kinship and History in Anna Ospelt's Wurzelstudien (2020), Kim de'l Horizon's Blutbuch (2022), and Nanna Storr-Hansen's Bogetid (2022)
Stefanie Heine
Part IV: Vegetal Epistemologies
Chapter 14. Algorithmic Plant Justice: Vegetal Beings and the Governing of Precision Agriculture in South Africa
Laura Foster
Chapter 15. Rooted like a Tree: Vegetal epistemology in German tree-sitting activism
Claudia Terragni
Chapter 16. Constructing a "Harmonious Society" of Nonnative Future Forests
Mariko Whitenack
Chapter 17. Being the Edge: Coral Reefs and other Trans Life
Dylan McCarthy Blackston and Abraham B. Weil