Tag: History
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Botany’s Colonial Present and Alternative Futures: A Conversation with Banu Subramaniam
in PodcastsLaleh Ahmad speaks with Banu Subramaniam about her recent book Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism. Their conversation explores how colonialism shaped botany and considers how we might imagine alternative futures.
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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 Wilson, these scholars explore the co-evolution of humans and maiz (corn), through the lens of cultural history, art and performance, science, and language.
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The Colonial Costs of Shipbreaking
in EssaysThe 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.
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Reggae’s Agrarian Resistance
in EssaysThe 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.
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The Tenth Century Equivalent of 🍑 🍆? 🥬.
in EssaysWhen 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?
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Bad Bunny’s Botanical, Eco-Rasquache Aesthetic
in EssaysFrom 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.
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Biotopia, American Imperialism, and Science: A Conversation with Jim Endersby
in PodcastsRebecca 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.
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Mangroves and the (Un)Making of Imperial Borders
in EssaysColonial and imperial powers have long sought to bring order to unruly, wetland ecosystems. Iliana Capozzoli follows this trend globally—and how mangroves fight back.
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Caring for Toxic Tobacco Cultivation Across Caribbean and Andean Colombia
in EssaysIn 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.
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La emergencia climática a través imaginarios multidimensional de Flatland
in EssaysLa novela decimonónica Flatland, de Edwin A. Abbott, suele describirse como una obra de ciencia ficción (o ficción matemática). Valeria Zambianchi sostiene que también puede leerse como ficción climática, en la medida en que muestra que las posibilidades para enfrentar la crisis climática ya están presentes en nuestro mundo.