The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World

(Hardback)

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The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence. The leading metaphor of the bookthe green thread, echoing poet Dylan Thomas phrase the green fusecarries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, the green thread is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, the green thread links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetala reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.

Reviews

Over fifty years ago Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring that our attitude toward plants is a singularly narrow one. This book offers readers in the humanities and sciences a more broadly conceived and sophisticated interdisciplinary conversation about plants. More significantly, the book reinvigorates a human dialogue with plants that has been displaced by modern cultural attitudes toward the vegetal world. -- Mark C. Long, Keene State College

Author Bio

PatrciaVieirais associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comparative literature, and film and media studies at Georgetown University. MonicaGaglianoisresearch associate professorofevolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia. John Charles Ryanis postdoctoral research fellow in communications and arts atEdith Cowan University.