The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World - Paperback

by Patrícia Vieira (Editor), Monica Gagliano (Editor), John Charles Ryan (Editor)

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 book--"the green thread", echoing poet Dylan Thomas' phrase "the green fuse"--carries 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 vegetal--a 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.

Author Biography

Patrícia Vieira is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, comparative literature, and film and media studies at Georgetown University.

Monica Gagliano is research associate professor of evolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia.

John Charles Ryan is postdoctoral research fellow in communications and arts at Edith Cowan University.