Reading Group: Thinking with Plants and Fungi

Registration is required: 

Meets biweekly from 3-5 PM at the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Recent scientific research has shed light on the sophisticated ways in which plants and fungi sense, make sense of, and interact with the world. Alongside these discoveries is a wave of interest in the “more-than-human” humanities, this scholarship raises fundamental questions about the nature of the human and the non-human: what is mind, where does it extend, and how? How do plants and fungi trouble our understanding of “thinking" – and perhaps cause us to reconsider what it means to be human? How do we ethically work with them? What cultural frameworks give us opportunities to think about next means of engagement? In its third year of gathering, this reading group will explore these questions and more. Past scholarship has included works by leading thinkers such as Emanuele Coccia, Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Michael Marder, and more. 
Email plants@hds.harvard.edu to be added to the reading group mailing list
Instructor's bio:
Natalia is an herbalist, wildlife rescue & rehabilitation apprentice, and Ph.D. candidate in the Study of Religion at Harvard University, where she recently completed a Master of Theological Studies degree with a focus on the intersection of ecology and spiritual practice. She researches relational ontologies, posthuman ethics, and diction on personhood in scientific discourse, specifically neuroscience. Her secondary work is in Celtic Studies on trans-species soul migration in mythology and plants addressed in the vocative in Old Irish poetry. 
Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out New York, Vice, For The Wild, and more. For more information + publications, visit selkieprojects.com. 
Subsequent meetings are: 9/26, 10/10, 10/24, 11/7, 11/21