Symposium Program

Free and open to the public. All events will take place at the newly renovated Alumnae House on the Smith College campus at 33 Elm St., Northampton, MA. Visitors can follow this link to Google Maps.

DAY 1: Friday, March 29

12:30-1:00pm: Welcome

  • Opening Remarks by Provost Michael Thurston
  • Introduction by Colin Hoag

1:00-2:30pm: Atmospheric Poetics

  • Moderator: Colin Hoag
  • Amanda Golden: “Greenhouse Poetics: Sylvia Plath and Theodore Roethke”
  • Malcolm Sen: “Climate Wars: The Air Index of the Anthropocene”
  • Jess Gersony: “Carbon Movement in Trees under Environmental Stress”

2:45-4:15pm: Possible Gardens

  • Moderator: Lily Gurton-Wachter
  • Ada Smailbegović: “Foxglove: Strange Clocks in Derek Jarman’s Garden”
  • Melissa Parrish: “Non-Human Life and Mutual Aid in Francis Lo’s, A Series of Un/Natural/Disasters
  • Elaine Gan: “How a Tree Becomes American: Chestnut Hybrids, Mutants, Transgenics”

4:30-5:45pm: Keynote

  • Jean-Thomas Tremblay: “Explicit Content: After Breathing Aesthetics

DAY 2: Saturday, March 30

8:00-8:30am: Welcome

8:30-10:00am: On Seeing through Glass

  • Moderator: Cat Dawson
  • Kathleen Pierce: “The Orangutan in the Wardian Case: Making Natural Knowledge and Visibilizing Animal Subjectivities between the Garden, the Museum, and the Scientific Journal”
  • Kimiko Matsumura: “Diorama Nation: Glass, Vision, and Patriotism in the Hall of North American Mammals”
  • Caroline Melly: “The Entourage Effect: The Allure of Molecule Sociality in an Age of Pharmaceutical Isolation”

10:15-11:45am: Living Collections

  • Moderator: Javier Puente
  • Mary Pena: “’Alive in Their Garden’: Curating Black Latinx Ecologies”
  • Xan Chacko: “Queering the Greenhouse: Rethinking Kinship through Horticultural Labor”
  • Ashanti Shih: “Beyond Ornament: Orientalism and Reparative History at the Arnold Arboretum”

12:00-2:30pm: Break

2:45-4:15pm: Gender, Race, and Other Politics of Plant Life – A Conversation

  • Banu Subramaniam and Krista Lynes

4:30-5:45pm: Poetry Reading

  • Jjjjjerome Ellis: “Aster of Ceremonies”