Eighteenth-Century Plant Studies
This projected volume is a collection of interdisciplinary humanities essays on how plants were perceived, represented and understood in the long eighteenth century, with special attention to new ways in which texts from this period can be discussed and understood in the light of twenty-first century advances in plant sciences, plant studies, and the philosophy of plants.
Deadlines: Proposals and abstracts for essays of between 5,000-7,000 words by
15th March 2025 (full essays by 31st December 2025).
Details: Email min.wild@plymouth.ac.uk or kathryn.gray@plymouth.ac.uk
For this volume we seek new and current work which puts eighteenth-century plants, as represented by word and picture, under the lens of any aspect of Plant Studies and the ‘vegetal turn.’ We welcome work which understands vegetal life not as a passive commodity for human use, but as being – in Michael Marder’s words – ‘coextensive with a distinct subjectivity with which we might engage’ (Plant Thinking, 2013: 8). Famous stories of European plant discoveries and exploitation – such as that of Captain Bligh’s breadfruit and of deforestation for naval defence – have had some scholarly attention, as has Enlightenment categorisation and instrumentation of plant life, and there has also been attention to the contributions of female botanists in the period, but we are soliciting work which is energised by the kinds of inversions and revisions suggested by thinking through plants and their kinds of agency.
The projected volume is a collection of interdisciplinary essays on how plants were perceived, represented and understood in the long eighteenth century, with special attention to new ways in which texts from this period can be discussed and understood in the light of twenty-first century advances in plant sciences and the philosophy of plants. If the long eighteenth century was really the era in which a plant came to be seen, understood, named binomially, and categorised as an ’efficient assemblage of interlocked cellular constituents’ (Ryan, Plants in Contemporary Poetry, 2018: 67), how do the texts discussed in this volume demonstrate, refute or undermine that claim?
Plants and Their Perceptions: Vegetal Agency in the Global Eighteenth Century
Further information:
We are open to any work which investigates primary material from the long eighteenth century (1660-1832) in the light of recent plant studies and/or vegetal agency. Essays are welcome which may encompass form, content or both, and also those which might ally any other fertile critical perspective with Plant Studies. These may include in various degrees and combinations the following: decolonization; aesthetic or literary theory; eighteenth-century history, politics and culture; rhetoric and literary form; art methodologies and artistic practice; modern and/ or Enlightenment philosophy; network theory; ‘plant thinking’; feminism; ethnobotany; queer studies; posthumanism; plant personhood; individual author studies; vegetal geographies; transatlantic and/or global studies; and eco-criticism including ‘deep ecology.’ We seek work which is ready to make that shift in which what are taken as objects ‘might themselves be thought of as subjects,’ in Malcolm Miles’s useful formula (Eco-Aesthetics, 2014: 3).
A noteworthy feature of this book will be its inclusion of reproductions: the texts under discussion in each essay will be reproduced in the volume alongside them. These could include paintings, drawings, poems in their original publication format, reproductions of periodical pieces, photographs of eighteenth-century objects or artefacts, and more –we are happy to discuss all suggestions. We are already working with a scholarly press who has expressed strong interest in the project.