Plants have traditionally been decreased to the role of passive bystander, ornamental backdrop, or mere symbol. While posthumanism and environmental humanities have brought non-human agency into focus in recent years, they emphasize animals, landscapes, and ecosystems writ giant. This analysis community focuses on the conceptualization of plants, their agency, and their cultural/natural affect so as to form the emerging area of literary and cultural plant studies. For this objective, we bring collectively scholars throughout disciplines who work with a wide range of approaches from already established fields corresponding to animal research, environmental humanities, posthumanism, traditional philology, ecocriticism, language philosophy, cultural as well as queer and gender research. We hope that the community will inspire projects that map the subjects, theories, and strategies particular to literary/cultural/important plant studies, in order to outline this burgeoning research discipline and determine its stakes and prospects. We welcome like-minded scholars, particularly but not solely those working in literary and cultural studies. The network is meant to facilitate collaborations and make related resources accessible to everyone, so your contributions make it come to life. This worldwide community was based in 2016 on the German Studies Association convention (on the seminar: The Literary Life of Plants: Agency, Languages, and Poetics of the Vegetal) and is headed by Dr. Joela Jacobs (University of Arizona) and Dr. Isabel Kranz (University of Vienna). It has been supported in a variety of how by graduate assistants Sina Meissgeier and Dani Stuchel.
