This class invites you to practice a new kind of plant-consciousness.  Our guides will be contemporary artists and thinkers who are encouraging new relationships between human and vegetal life, or recalling very old ones, with plant protagonists, gardens in galleries, and botany-based forms of philosophy, architecture, music and more.

Following the lead of these culture-makers, we will draw on the new science of plant communication and learning in this class; uncover plant-based histories, and renew ancient understandings of human-plant relations. But plants themselves will also be primary sources, as each student follows a sequence of exercises to deepen understanding of a plant "interviewee" -- one they'll grow at home from an unidentified seed -- and uses multiple modes of research to become the class expert on a particular plant species, culminating in their own contribution to the vegetal humanities.

See the schedule of readings, seminars, and assignments

Curious? There's a vegetal humanities preview here

Is this class for you?

What you'll do in Vegetal Humanities:

The "How to Interview a Plant" Project. At the start of the semester you’ll be mailed a kit with a container, soil, and unidentified seeds. You will make visual observations of your growing plant every day (#vegetalhumanities) eventually merging them in a time-lapse video. You’ll also complete a series of more intensive journal exercises, based on the process for deepening botanical attention developed by nature educator Craig Holdredge. 

The Plant Expertise Project. Each student will choose a type of plant to become our class expert on over the course of the semester. Periodic assignments will guide you through researching its biology, ecological networks, aesthetic qualities, and cultural histories. At the end of the semester you’ll present your own Vegetal Humanities project informed by this work. This could be an essay, or take another form such as short story, film, or dance.

Reading/Watching. Because you'll be doing an assignment almost every week for the two projects, weekly readings for this course will be limited to about the length of a textbook chapter. Sometimes it will be popular magazine articles, sometimes a literary text, sometimes a scholarly essay, sometimes I'll assign a video to watch. These have to be read/watched before class each week.

Talking/Listening. Each week in seminar I'll introduce works of art, (ranging from photographs to performances, gardens, films, and more) that illuminate a different question about plant/people relationships (see some examples here), and we'll discuss them in relation to the assigned text. We'll also use breakout rooms for initial discussion and debate. You'll be able to ask artists your questions directly when they come to class as visitors, and other guest experts will introduce us to some of Harvard's botanical resources.

Some recommended reading/viewing