Someday, with luck and hard work, she will have a name too.

Shannon already knows the material in this course 😂

I’d love to take @eayers0.bsky.social’s class on botanical bodies but instead I got to participate in a session with herbals and other early modern books.

Check out Dr. Ayers’ class themes and related illustrations in her thread below!

Trump's 2027 budget aims to shutter the NEA, NEH and IMLS for good: L.A. arts and culture this weekend Trump's 2027 budget aims to shutter the NEA, NEH and IMLS, providing only enough funding to permanently wind down operations.

"In a country without the NEA, NEH and IMLS, hundreds of small local #arts groups would likely cease to exist entirely — and with them, the community, education and enlightenment that underpin our increasingly fragile, fractured society." @jessicagelt.bsky.social in @latimes.com

🌿🌴🌿 And now: just waiting for finals to come in! Let me know if you want the syllabus, want to talk about managing weird topics + assignments for large lecture classes with no prior knowledge of the subject, working with collections, &c. This semester was a plant-filled blast. Ending the 🧵/ 🌿🌴🌿

🌿 Thanks so much to the institutions supporting our work this semester: Yale's Medical Historical Library, Beinecke, Center for British Art, Peabody, Archives + Manuscripts, Farm, and Marsh Botanical Garden. Incredible that we got a lecture class into all of these spaces at some point.

🌿...and students created their own illustrations + creative work in conversation with the primary sources and secondary sources from the syllabus, writing about their processes while doing hands-on, embodied work. The results were stunning, and I'll share them with you when I receive permission.

🌿 And for short assignments, we worked with designer @zoesadokierski.bsky.social to develop a new model for anti-AI slop: I curated collections of primary sources (illustrations, manuscripts, books, objects) at Yale's libraries, on 3 different themes per assignment...

🌿 Assignments this year were experimental + fun. As always, students could work on anything they wanted for finals, and could choose between a paper or creative project - based in original research. They're spanning centuries, topics, plants, languages, and students' interests...

🌿 Finally, this is the last week! Tomorrow we're talking about future paths in plant research (both in the humanities + sciences), and on Thurs we're spending a day at the botanical garden because we deserve it.

🌿 On that note, Yale's sustainable food program has been hit hard by budget cuts (among other institutional priorities), which is unconscionable. These are the good people doing the good work on campus. My class fulfills this certificate's requirements.

yaledailynews.com/articles/sus...

🌿 Last week: took advantage of the gorgeous weather to think through lessons from the plant + fungal world - queerness, kinship, anti-capitalism, nonhuman-centric time, dormancy, rest, resilience, symbiosis. We spent a beautiful day on the Yale Farm looking at crops, soil, fungi, and commitment. ❤️

🌿 Our final historical week on ethnobotany (esp. in the Amazon), using Richard Evans Schultes as a case study + focusing in on psychedelics. I have an article on Schultes + his legacy coming out soon, so stay tuned! Lots this semester on the thin line between plant-based medicines, drugs + poisons.

🌿 20thC plant breeding, genetic research + patenting through discussions of the military-industrial complex, using case studies from American agriculture (corn!) and the rising pharmaceutical industry (hoodia, yams, and more). This week was heavy on legal history, because it's WEIRD.

🌿 After break, a big week (that needs to be split into 2 next year). Eugenics in the American conservation movement through redwoods campaigns + ideas of "pristine" nature; attacks on "invasive" species + biological warfare amidst anti-immigration policy. This was the most popular week yet.

🌿 Last week before break: studies of evolution in plants, feat. the OGs - Charles Darwin + Joseph Dalton Hooker. Plant carnivory, movement, parasitism, strange orchids, + paleobotany. Finished with a fun class on plants in 19thC scifi through H.G. Wells, Rappacini's Daughter, and more.

🌿 Fully into the 19thC for my favorite week - the rise of imperial gardens + colonial collecting (aka my book project). Desires for "exotic" species, commercial collectors take hold, and botanical "science" struggles to define itself. Wardian cases + glass technology feature heavily.

🌿 Then into abortion history, focusing first on enslaved women's use of plants as abortifacients in the 18thC Atlantic World as forms of resistance, and then into 19thC British + American debates over emmenagogues + legal concerns around controlling women's bodies. Always a popular week.

🌿 Focused in on enslavement + plantation agriculture, bringing in questions not just of violence + monocropping but of resistance, poisons, maroon communities, and herbalism in the Caribbean. Lucky to have a grad student (Thomas Anderson) working on exactly this.

🌿 Then to the "field" to think through bioprospecting, acclimatization, illustration, and the search for drugs, often through complex interactions between colonial agents, collectors, and enslaved + Indigenous experts and healers in shifting power dynamics.

🌿 Moved into the 18thC to talk about classification, Linnaeus's sexual system, boxes + binaries, and the solidification of herbaria as taxonomic tools within a growing imperial context. Always a sleeper hit favorite, esp for students interested in sex + gender.

🌿 In our first content week, we discussed early modern anatomy + botanical entanglements, from women's wombs to materia medica + herbals. We were lucky to work with original manuscripts, books + illustrations at the Medical Historical Library from the 15th-18thC. @mazarine.bsky.social guest visit!

For context, this was a large undergrad lecture. I lectured Tues/Thurs, and PhD student TA's held discussion sections on Thurs/Fri.

Approx. 75-100pp of reading per week, mix of majors + classes, cross-listed in HSHM, History + Environmental Studies. No prior knowledge or interest in 🌿 needed.

🌿🌴🌿 We're wrapping up the semester!! That means it's time to recap my lecture class, Botanical Bodies: Plants, Medicine + Colonialism in the History of Science. Happy to share my syllabus, which I no longer make publicly available after some plagiarism issues. Get ready for a plant 🧵:

This article is so disturbing to me I had to stop reading after the first twenty percent. Maybe you'll be able to handle it?

A belted galloway cow walking into the mist, towards a bold, unpredictable future.

“So it was, on that misty morning, that Brenda set off for the capital. She knew not what she would find there, only that the time had come to move on - away from small-minded rural attitudes and people who called her ‘Oreo’ and ‘the wide panda’ - to seek a more fulfilling life.”

I wrote about Nepenthes, consumption + carnivory in this book - Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds - beautifully illustrated by a couple of collaborators. DM me if you want a PDF, and stay tuned for Nepenthes in my forthcoming writing.

www.routledge.com/Natural-Thin...

When a Houseplant Obsession Becomes a Nightmare Some of us just can’t resist the allure of the carnivorous Nepenthes. They’re beautiful, rare, and in every way life-consuming.

Old, but worth revisiting while I write about 19thC Nepenthes collecting in Borneo today. Nothing is new, including our deadly, destructive obsessions with "curious," rare, or strange plants.

www.wired.com/story/nightm...

This is, in fact, so deeply American and so conveniently ignored within our nation's history. I've been dying to review Yellowstone (+ related shows) for years in conversation with these ideas, but I can't actually bring myself to watch all of it.

So we kicked Native Americans off of their land + imposed restrictions on how they could use it for the sake of "environmental conservation," and now hyperwealthy Americans are retreating to that land while profiting from ecological destruction + exploitation? Cool.

inthesetimes.com/article/yell...