At this year’s ACLA conference, I participated in “Political Botany” a 3-day panel of thinking with plants and the human languages that are used to approach, understand, control, and enageg with them in text:

Seminar organizers: Jan Mieszkowski and Julia Ng

Day One (Thursday, June 16)
The Soft Life of Plants: Toward a New Politics of Place — Anthony Curtis Adler
“Chosen Shape”: Ruskin’s Bulbs as Critique of the Market Economy — Ayşe Çelikkol
In the Forest, A Gnarled Tree: Benjamin, Brecht, wuyong — Julia Ng
The Understory: The Overstory and the Arboreal Abject — Robin Blyn

Day Two (Friday, June 17)
Poetic Resistance of African Vegetation — May Mergenthaler
Post-Colonial Botany — Jan Mieszkowski
Plants at the Margin — Anne-Lise François
Algorithmic Flowers and the Politics of Classification — Markus Hardtmann

Day Three (Saturday, June 18)
Désœuvrement, Singularity, and Naming: The Imperative of Unworking in Rousseau and Nancy —
Saul Anton
Companion Plant Reading: Vegetal Voices Across Languages — Astrid Møller-Olsen
Garden Songs — Dominik Zechner
Fruitonomy, Fruitography — Simon Horn