What does it mean to practice biology as a feminist? To grapple with the colonial and racist histories of modern plant sciences? To move toward a feminist, decolonial botany?
Explore these questions with Dr. Banu Subramaniam: Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College, plant evolutionary biologist, and author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism, among other works.
This webinar takes place on Zoom, and a recording of the talk will be sent out to registrants after the event.
This event is co-organized by Wild Seed Project and MOFGA.
From Botany of Empire:
“Colonial ambitions spawned imperial attitudes, theories, and practices that remain entrenched within botany and across the life sciences. Banu Subramaniam draws on fields as disparate as queer studies, Indigenous studies, and the biological sciences to explore the labyrinthine history of how colonialism transformed rich and complex plant worlds into biological knowledge. Botany of Empire demonstrates how botany’s foundational theories and practices were shaped and fortified in the aid of colonial rule and its extractive ambitions. We see how colonizers obliterated plant time’s deep history to create a reductionist system that imposed a Latin-based naming system, drew on the imagined sex lives of European elites to explain plant sexuality, and discussed foreign plants like foreign humans. Subramanian then pivots to imagining a more inclusive and capacious field of botany untethered and decentered from its origins in histories of racism, slavery, and colonialism. This vision harnesses the power of feminist and scientific thought to chart a course for more socially just practices of experimental biology.”
The sliding scale ticket options are designed to make attending this webinar as accessible as possible. Please pay what is reasonable for you and your situation. The recommended price for WSP or MOFGA members is $10. The recommended price for non-WSP or MOFGA members is $15.
Questions? Email [email protected].
