‘Plants in Civic Futures’ brings together academics working across Literature, History, Geography, and Cultural Practices to discuss interdisciplinary multispecies perspectives on plant lives and plant thinking. It’s an opportunity to connect, over an informal lunch, with others working on Plant Humanities.
This Creative Manchester Research Café is the first of three exploring the significance of non-human presence and agency in theory and practice for imagining ‘Civic Futures’.
PANEL:
Chair – Dr Jenna C. Ashton, Research Lead for Creative and Civic Futures, Creative Manchester.
Dr Ingrid Hanson will discuss moss and acts of attention across boundaries of the human and non-human, the country and the city in nineteenth-century writings about moss and lichen.
Bio:
Ingrid Hanson is a lecturer in English literature, author of William Morris and the Uses of Violence (2014) and editor of 21st Century Oxford Authors Selected Works of William Morris (OUP, forthcoming 2024). She has published work on nineteenth-century writings on violence, peace, masculinities and utopia, and is currently working on three projects: a series of articles and book chapters on Vernon Lee’s ecologies, a book project on protest writings, entitled Disturbing the Peace, and a new, collaborative and exploratory project with Anke Bernau and others, on the politics, aesthetics and histories of urban moss.
Dr Laura Pottinger will focus on material and sensory engagements with plants, touching on both previous research with seed savers to think about plants and sharing economies/ethics; and current research around colour, creative practice and noticing natures.
Bio:
Laura Pottinger is a Cultural Geographer and Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, with an interest in practices of making, cultivation and consumption; participatory, ethnographic and creative methodologies; and people-plant relationships. Her current research works closely with textiles artists to investigate the relationship between slow, creative practice and environmental care and to explore the potentials of alternative temporalities in academic scholarship.
Dr Anke Bernau will be talking about how particular qualities of moss - especially its 'miniature' size and its strange temporality - have been central to ways in which it has been both aestheticized (in literature, in popular science writing, in botany) and politicized (as standing for certain human ideals or values; as representing certain 'naturalised' power relations).
Bio:
Anke Bernau is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature and Culture and have worked on a diverse range of topics, including female virginity, poetics, aesthetics, material culture and environmental humanities. I am particularly interested in recent work emerging out of Critical Plant Studies, and am co-editing a special issue on 'Plant Temporalities', as well as a volume on the global cultural history of 'nature' in the Middle Ages. My current monograph is about medieval ecological aesthetics, which brings past examples and current theories into conversation. Along with Ingrid, Laura and other colleagues, I am involved in a new project on mosses in Manchester.
Register:
This event is free and open to anyone. As catering is provided we ask you to ensure you can come before registering. If your plans change and you are no longer able to attend, we ask that you update your registration status. Please register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/research-cafe-plants-in-civic-futures-tickets-852109150407?aff=oddtdtcreator
