Vegetal Anima

Dr. Sushmita Chatterjee is Professor and Chair in the Department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, feminist and queer theory, and animal studies. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume Meat! A Transnational Analysis (Duke University Press, 2021), and monograph Postcolonial Hauntings: Play and Transnational Feminism (University of Illinois Press, 2024). Banu Subramaniam is the Luella LaMer Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. Banu is author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press 2024), Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014).

• Introduction: Invited Roundtable: What is a plant? Mel Chen, Alison Kafer, Naisargi Dave, Sara Ahmed, Katherine McKittrick, Eva Hayward, Jen Nash, Natasha MyersPart I: Vegetal MattersChapter 1. Site, Sensation, and Subjection: Excavating the Racial Materialities of TeaChandrica BaruaChapter 2. Botanical Phantasmagoria: Critical Biogeography from the Roadside to the Plant ConservatoryColin HoagChapter 3. Indigenous Cosmological Ecologies, Plant Peoples, and Decolonial CareHo’esta Mo’e’hahneChapter 4. Trans/Planting Conservation: Multispecies Entanglements in the Galapagos IslandsJenne SchmidtChapter 5. Sugarcane “Improvement” Program and Deskilling of Cultivators in Colonial United ProvincesAzram Rahman KhanPart II: Vegetal TravelsChapter 6. Crop wars in Brazil: Towards a counter-colonial ecologyAna Laura Malmaceda; Alana Moraes, Fábio Zuker; Lucas Maciel, Otávio PenteadoChapter 7. Tuber Tales: Unearthing the Imperial History of Potatoes in BelarusTatsiana ShchurkoChapter 8. Phragmites australis and Arundo donax: Transnational plant lives and technologies in the socialist Danube DeltaCalin CotoiChapter 9. Spaces of Speculation and Acclimatization of Species: Emplacing the Hevea brasiliensis, 1876-1906Anirudh GurumoorthyPart III: Vegetal StoriesChapter 10. Tendril, echo, palimpsest: a brief cultural history of the Benjamin Rush Medicinal Garden at the College of Physicians of PhiladelphiaCharis BokeChapter 11. The Secret Life of Plants: Botanical Decoloniality and Indian Literature Elwin Susan JohnChapter 12. On Latex and Celluloid: The Colonial Extraction of Rubber on FilmNathaniel ZetterChapter 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 HeinePart IV: Vegetal EpistemologiesChapter 14. Algorithmic Plant Justice: Vegetal Beings and the Governing of Precision Agriculture in South AfricaLaura FosterChapter 15. Rooted like a Tree: Vegetal epistemology in German tree-sitting activismClaudia TerragniChapter 16. Constructing a “Harmonious Society” of Nonnative Future ForestsMariko WhitenackChapter 17. Being the Edge: Coral Reefs and other Trans LifeDylan McCarthy Blackston and Abraham B. Weil