Vegetal Anima
Why Plant Studies Now?
Vegetal Anima
Why Plant Studies Now?
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.
Table of Contents
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, Fábio Zuker; Lucas Maciel, Otávio 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 Bøgetid (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
Product details
| Published | 17 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 256 |
| ISBN | 9798216378211 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Series | Critical Plant Studies |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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