Green Thread

Patrícia Vieira is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comparative literature, and film and media studies at Georgetown University. Monica Gagliano is research associate professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia.John Charles Ryan is postdoctoral research fellow in communications and arts at Edith Cowan University.

“Over fifty years ago Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring that our “attitude toward plants is a singularly narrow one.” This book offers readers in the humanities and sciences a more broadly conceived and sophisticated interdisciplinary conversation about plants. More significantly, the book reinvigorates a human dialogue with plants that has been displaced by modern cultural attitudes toward the vegetal world.”

• Introduction. Patrícia Vieira, Monica Gagliano and John C. RyanSection I. Disseminating PlantsChapter 1. What’s Planted in the Event? On the Secret Life of a Philosophical Concept, Michael MarderChapter 2. Seeing Green: The Re-discovery of Plants and Nature’s Wisdom, Monica GaglianoChapter 3. Tolkien’s Sonic Trees and Perfumed Herbs: Plant Intelligence in Middle-earth, John Charles RyanChapter 4. What’s Talking? On the Nostalgic Epistemology of Plant Communication, Stefan RiegerChapter 5. “Wild Memory” as an Anthropocene Heuristic: Cultivating Ethical Paradigms for Galleries, Museums, and Seed Banks, Tom BristowSection II. Politicizing PlantsChapter 6. Preserving Plants in an Era of Extinction: Sentimental and Scientific Discourse in Mary Thacher Higginson’s “A Dying Race”, Jennifer SchellChapter 7. Laws of the Jungle: The Politics of Contestation in Cinema about the Amazon, Patrícia VieiraChapter 8. Monstrous Flora: Dangerous Cinematic Plants of the Cold War Era, Andrew HoweChapter