Thinking with Maíz: A Conversation with Vick Quezada and Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra
Artist Vick Quezada and evolutionary biologist Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra both center maíz in their work despite their very different approaches. Together with M. Hamilton, these scholars explore the co-evolution of humans and maiz (corn) through the lenses of cultural history, art and performance, science, and language …
The Colonial Costs of Shipbreaking
The shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is often hailed as an economic success story. Md. Borhan Uddin and Kimberley Thomas explain why this industry is, in fact, an extension of colonial logics …
Reggae’s Agrarian Resistance
The plantation histories and logics carried through roots reggae music inspired Carmen Andall‑Woodroofe to pursue a Ph.D. In this essay, she centers that music to examine plantation futures—and the ways reggae resists them …
El Contrato Químico
Micaela Edelson revela los costos para la salud—a menudo ocultos—que conlleva la exposición a pesticidas para los trabajadores agrícolas migrantes en Estados Unidos …
The Worlding Work of Plants: A Conversation with Michael Marder
M. Hamilton and Ellie Kincaid talk plants with Michael Marder. Their conversation invites readers to consider plants as active participants in thought and world‑making …
Learning from Japanese Knotweed in Brussels’s Feral Wetlands
In the abandoned, deindustrialized interstices of Brussels, feral wetlands flourish. Drawing on conversations with residents, Louise Bazelaire explores the history and politics of these liminal spaces through a plant that is loved and hated in equal measure: Japanese knotweed …
The Tenth Century Equivalent of 🍑 🍆? 🥬.
When Tiffany VanWinkoop looked through letters between Constantine VII and his friend, she was surprised to read erotic requests for and descriptions of lettuce. Might lettuce be a tenth century equivalent of the contemporary eggplant and peach emoji? …
Fronds of Knowledge and Decolonial Fern Relations in the Sikkim Himalayas
Views of ferns are as abundant as the plants themselves. Drawing on Indigenous knowledge and a lifetime of close attention, Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia shows how ferns act as decolonial agents—and how they have long been shaped by the landscapes of empire …
Bad Bunny’s Botanical, Eco-Rasquache Aesthetic
From sugarcane plantations to broken electricity poles, Bad Bunny presents and protests the historical and lived realities of Puerto Rico. Isaac Salazar argues that his aesthetic is a form of eco-rasquache and a celebration of collective survival under precarity …
Biotopia, American Imperialism, and Science: A Conversation with Jim Endersby
Rebecca Laurent talks with Jim Endersby about his new book: The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology’s Imaginary Futures, 1900-1935. They discuss how a failed scientific theory inspired public optimism for science, plants, and American imperialism …
Mangroves and the (Un)Making of Imperial Borders
Colonial and imperial powers have long sought to bring order to unruly, wetland ecosystems. Iliana Capozzoli follows this trend globally—and how mangroves fight back …
Caring for Toxic Tobacco Cultivation Across Caribbean and Andean Colombia
In the Caribbean and Andean regions of Colombia, women and children perform(ed) the necessary labor to sustain the rural communities at the heart of toxic production of tobacco. In tracing these histories of care and toxicity, Nicolás Felipe Rueda Rey and Margarita Martínez-Osorio ask what accountability looks like today …
