Literature of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Taking writing in the widest sense possible to include inscription, drawing, and the making and unmaking of traces, this class will focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writings about and with plants, while also considering the metaphor of “plant writing” as something performed by plants themselves. We will consider the analogy between “close reading” and the slow work of observation and description necessary to such writing.

In what ways does botanical literature both contribute to and resist the geologically unprecedented homogenization of planetary biota that follows from European colonialism? How does the traffic in plants relate to the historical traumas of the forced displacement of people, chattel slavery and colonial dispossession? How do ideas of language, gender, sexuality, temporality, medicine and healing change in relation to plants during this period? Cognizant that the division of plants and animals into separate kingdoms, like the separation of humans from other living beings, is specific to the Western philosophical tradition, we will explore alternatives to these separations.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills