Premodern Plants (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
Organizer Name
Myra Seaman
Organizer Affiliation
College of Charleston
Presider Name
Robert W. Barrett Jr.
Presider Affiliation
Univ. of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign
Paper Title 1
Fruit, Milk, Rot: From Breast to Death in Perceforest
Presenter 1 Name
Brooke Heidenreich Findley
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Pennsylvania State Univ.-Altoona
Paper Title 2
"Remember, Mugwort": Memory, Temporality, and Vegetable Agency in the Old English "Nine Herbs Charm"
Presenter 2 Name
Lisa M. C. Weston
Presenter 2 Affiliation
California State Univ.-Fresno
Paper Title 3
Planting Empire: Colonial Botany in Seventeenth-Century England
Presenter 3 Name
Peter Remien
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Lewis-Clark State College
Paper Title 4
Laureate Trees
Presenter 4 Name
Danielle Allor
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Rutgers Univ.
Start Date
11-5-2018 10:00 AM
Session Location
Fetzer 1045
Description
In September 2018, postmedieval will publish “Premodern Plants,” a special issue devoted to the ongoing crossing of medieval studies and critical plant studies. The latter field is an emergent ecotheoretical approach that does for medieval plants what critical animal studies has done for medieval animals (as exemplified in the work of such scholars as Susan Crane, Sarah Kay, Peggy McCracken, and Karl Steel). However, as philosopher Michael Marder argues, critical plant studies begins with the reversal of Aristotelian taxonomy, taking seriously those plant characteristics of sessility and mute growth that zoocentric Western philosophy all too quickly dismisses as “vegetative soul.” Marder’s theories are tendentious and frequently utopian in their politics; they are also intellectually liberating insofar as they defy plant blindness with new questions about vegetal life. We thus consider such methods a provocation to explore how contemplation of the plant, from recent scientific controversies about its intelligence and genetic modification to its literary status as a symbol for growth and continuance, can alter our received histories of both the human and the ecological in medieval studies.
Myra Seaman
Premodern Plants (A Roundtable)
Fetzer 1045
In September 2018, postmedieval will publish “Premodern Plants,” a special issue devoted to the ongoing crossing of medieval studies and critical plant studies. The latter field is an emergent ecotheoretical approach that does for medieval plants what critical animal studies has done for medieval animals (as exemplified in the work of such scholars as Susan Crane, Sarah Kay, Peggy McCracken, and Karl Steel). However, as philosopher Michael Marder argues, critical plant studies begins with the reversal of Aristotelian taxonomy, taking seriously those plant characteristics of sessility and mute growth that zoocentric Western philosophy all too quickly dismisses as “vegetative soul.” Marder’s theories are tendentious and frequently utopian in their politics; they are also intellectually liberating insofar as they defy plant blindness with new questions about vegetal life. We thus consider such methods a provocation to explore how contemplation of the plant, from recent scientific controversies about its intelligence and genetic modification to its literary status as a symbol for growth and continuance, can alter our received histories of both the human and the ecological in medieval studies.
Myra Seaman