Seminar in Plants, Peoples and Empire

1.5 credits · Undergraduate

Investigates the pivotal role played by plants in their transformations from living organisms to products that are used, exchanged, understood and stolen. Explores how plants have served as focal points of colonization, as symbols of hegemony and resistance and as material anchors for competing systems of classification. Focuses on the history of botany broadly understood, while also incorporating perspectives from Indigenous and environmental studies as well as histories of medicine, zoology and anthropology.