The Spiritual Life of Plants

Organized by Natania Meeker (French and Italian, and Comparative Literature) and Antonia Szabari (French and Italian, and Comparative Literature)

The figure of the plant is a crucial focus of conversations between the natural sciences and the human sciences during the early modern period, standing as it does at the border between the animate and the inanimate, the mobile and the fixed, the sensitive and the stony. This series will cross these disciplinary divides yet again, in order to engage humanists, social scientists and scientists alike in a conversation about our difference from and connection to the life of plants, throughout history and especially as we stand at an ecological crossroads today.

March 11, 2010
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Animals (But Were Afraid to Ask Vegetables)