FYSEMR 63W: Vegetal Humanities: Paying Attention to Plants in Contemporary Art and Culture

What do plants have to do with AI? What is the vegetal archive of colonialism? Are plants persons? Does nature have rights?  

Attitudes toward plants are changing.

Among world-historical developments of the last 15 years, the shift in how people think about plants might not stand out. But like tree roots that fracture concrete sidewalks or mosses that dissolve brick and mortar, the vegetal turn in contemporary culture is a powerful force hidden in plain sight.

Once treated as the "green background" by Euro-American societies, now plants are in the cultural foreground. Gardens grow in galleries, literature  discovers plant protagonists, and botanists write bestsellers, while digital culture propogates concepts like "plantfluencers," "plantcore," "plant parenting," and more. The new vegetal culture is fueled by fascination with the recent science of plant intelligence, communication, and memory, while also learning from (and/or, appropriating) indigenous worldviews in which plant intelligence, communication and memory are nothing but common sense.

The Vegetal Humanities explores plant-centered thought, art, and history. We’ll trace how the vegetal turn reshapes ideas of consciousness, ethics, civics, and ecology; learn how plants both powered colonialism and memorialize anticolonial resistance; and consider how plant perspectives challenge human-centered concepts of individual and population, sexuality and gender, living and dying.

To study the vegetal humanities is to think with plants—to track and analyze the pervasive turn toward the vegetal while experiencing how, at its best, it changes how we imagine the world and our place within it.

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They make up more than 80% of the earth's biomass.  Your every breath depends on them.  But do you really pay attention to plants? What would happen if you did? 

In this class, exploring our own plant-consciousness is an integral part of understanding the wider vegetal turn.

Your capacity for botanical attention will expand in this class as we mindfully reorient ourselves: to the often-overlooked plants we live among, to the tempos  of vegetal movement and growth, to the utterly alien aspects of plant bodies and ways of living (and surprisingly relatable elements as well). Following an adapted form of Craig Holdredge's protocol , you will learn "how to interview a plant":  the one you grow in your room from seeds distributed at the first seminar.

more media for vegetal humanitarians

What will you do in this class?

The "How to Interview a Plant" Project. At the start of the semester you’ll get a kit with container, soil, grow light, and seeds. As your plant sprouts and grows, you'll deepen botanical attention through exercises developed by nature educator Craig Holdredge. 

The Plant Expertise Project. Each student will become resident expert on a plant of their choice. You'll produce reports on scientific, social, cultural, and procedural or hands-on perspectives on this plant, and then design your own Vegetal Humanities project.

In past years, students have become experts on Indigo, Frankincense, Black-Eyed Susan, Scottish Thistle, Pitcher Plant, and many more. Projects have included short stories, paintings, poems, abd vegetable-dyed garments; a hand-carved wooden spoon, a graphic novel, a game, a design prototype, a tea-tasting, and a perfume.

Reading/Watching.  Literary texts, science journalism, scholarly essays, films, fiction, poetry, philosophy, to be read/watched before class each week. 

Talking/Listening. Each seminar will juxtapose readings with works of contemporary art that illuminate a question about plant-people relationships. Sessions may take place at Harvard sites such as the Arboretum, Art Museum,  or Herbaria.

(For a complete schedule with links to readings and assignments click here)

Who can take this class?

Only first-year students. Note that though it involves non-written, creative work, it is not an art making class. It is a suitable entry point for (and will count toward the concentration in) History of Art and Architecture as well as  Art, Film, and Visual Studies, and it complements coursework in EPS,  History of Science, Social Studies, and Hist&Lit.

You do not need any prior experience in the arts. Botanical knowledge is warmly welcomed but neither expected nor required.