Seeds of Diaspora

Project Co-Directors: Lynnette Widder & Ralph Ghoche

Project Coordinator: Fern Thompsett

‘Seeds of Diaspora’ will convene an interdisciplinary group of academics and practitioners. Together, we will select a short list (5-8) of non-cultivated plants found in New York City, and consider how they each embody native and non-native landscape imaginaries. We will link each plant and its botanical descriptors to maps, images, practices, and texts that communicate ecological, herbalist, culinary, agricultural, literary, artistic, anthropological, and other cultural traditions. In an era of fraught nationalism, mass migrations and climate change, as the boundaries between ecosystems and society are constantly reconfigured, we will emphasize the potential of plants to connect and to describe cultural landscapes past, present, and future.