3.0

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With their biogeochemical power of rearranging elements, plants have sustained and proliferated life on Earth. Accordingly, humans have cultivated different relations with plants, from domestication to sciences, from agriculture to industrialized plantation, across space and time. Planetary ecological crises have radically pushed us to reconsider not simply what it means to be human but also what it means to live as an “earthling” within the complicated, fast-changing webs of life and nonlife, which are fundamentally intertwined with the vegetal forms of life. This course will explore anthropologically-informed diagnoses and prognoses of the various ways of engaging plants. Specifically, we will delve into standard forms through which humans have engaged plants, institutional frameworks that have given rise to these forms, and alternatives to these forms and institutions