Course Masterclass: Ways of Making and Knowing in Plant Humanities: Cultivating Understanding in Visual Cultures of Vegetation

Course description

Plant matter is unruly, prodigious, generous, instrumentalized, and critically essential to humanity and other animals.  It is also critically endangered by climate change.  In this time of ecological upheaval and crisis, the rising field of plant humanities has value and urgency.

Plant humanities is a relatively new area of research that has emerged in the past decade to address human-vegetal interactions, their meanings, epistemes, effects and affects.  Significant developments in this field include sustained research activities led at Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC), the Huntingdon Library, Archives and Botanical Gardens (San Marino CA) and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London), as well as that of innovative individual scholars (see reading list).  The call for investigations of both the pasts and potential futures of human-plant relations has thus forged new research methods for identifying and examining overlooked or underexplored records of human-plant interactions held in established collecting institutions as diverse as herbaria, botanical gardens, art museums, and colonial archives, but also extending to areas as varied as comparative literature and the 'practices of everyday life'.

Intersecting different interdisciplinary practice-based methods such as art history, artistic research, collections-based research, curation, and environmental studies, this PhD course aims to strengthen the participants' understanding of the wide field of plant humanities in the context of visual culture.  How can we get to 'plant thinking' or 'vegetal philosophy' through excavating and charting historical traces left in records such as paintings and other artworks, herbarium sheets, colonial and agricultural planting records, advice to householders, and more?

This PhD course is rooted in the research, methods, conference and exhibitions effected through the research project Skjulte Plantehistorier; kunsten at opdage interartslige forviklinger i det grønne danske hjem. Taking place in significant and diverse locations where art and plants intersect, including Ordrupgaard, Den Hirschsprungske Samling, Statens Museum for Kunst, Statens Naturhistoriske Museum, Botaniske Have København, and Landbohøjskole, the course will unfurl over the 'landscape' of plant knowledge in the visual field in a Scandinavian context. 

Students will benefit from knowledge shared by authoritative international and interdisciplinary speakers at the two-day conference, and guided tours of gardens and galleries.  The final day of the course itself will give six students an opportunity to present, discuss and receive feedback on their plant-related practice-based research from fellow early career researchers as well as from four of the conference's expert speakers across a range of disciplines from art history and history of science through to aesthetics, media studies and colonial history.

Preliminary program with short description of activities

• Day 1, 01/12 (afternoon): Visit and guided tour to the first part of the exhibition Plantefeber. Verden i vindueskarmen at the art museum Den Hirschsprungske Samling, Copenhagen.
• Day 2, 02/12: Full attendance at the first day of the conference Plant Fever: Politics, Poetics, and Pleasures of Houseplants. Evening visit to the art museum Ordrupgaard for guided tour in the second part of the exhibition Plantefeber. Verden i vindueskarmen. Includes attendance at the conference reception at Ordrupgaard and opportunity for social interaction with speakers and other attendees.
  • o Venues: Botanical Garden + SMK, National Gallery of Denmark.
• Day 3, 03/12: Full attendance at the second day of the conference Plant Fever: Politics, Poetics, and Pleasures of Houseplants.
  • o Venue: Natural History Museum
• Day 4, 04/12: Full day intensive presentation and feedback workshop. Six participants will make short presentations of plant humanities research in progress. Keynote speakers at the conference will give feedback and facilitate peer-to-peer discussion.
  • o Venue: Main Building (1856) of Landbohøjskole (Bulöwsvej 17, Frederiksberg) which is set in the Landbohøjskole Gardens.

Aim/learning outcomes

• Via the conference + Master Class formats this PhD course aims to strengthen the participants understanding of the field of plant humanities, with a focus on the complex questions of how to explore plant knowledge via new methodologies or through exploring new or overlooked archives, collections, or materials.
• The course aims to create an interdisciplinary cohort of early career researchers from a range of practice-based fields whose focus on interactions between plants and people will bring them together and allow for methodological cross-pollinations between them.

Requirements for participation

Seats will be prioriteised for PhD students

• Interest in plant humanities
• Registered PhD students and/or
• Practice-based researchers (artists, curators etc) with documented relevant activities
• Museum professionals (curators) who wish to strengthen their research profile

Offered support to participants

Master Class participants will attend the conference for free, including conference meals and tours, and will have their accommodation paid for by the collaborating institutions (Aarhus University: Environmental Media and Aesthetics, PhD School and University of Copenhagen: Center for Practice-based Art Studies). There will be some stipendiary support for participants’ other costs, including travel costs, based on need and available resources: please state on your application if you would like to discuss this.

Target group/ participants
The course aims to create an interdisciplinary cohort of early career researchers from a range of practice-based fields whose focus on interactions between plants and people will bring them together and allow for methodological cross-pollinations between them. This cohort would include:

• artists
• art historians
• museum and archive professionals
• environmental studies researchers
• historians of the visual cultures of colonization
• comparative literature
• media and aesthetics

Workload
Preparation hours: 50

Preparation:

• The reading of a syllabus of key texts that will frame the theoretical discourses and practice-based methods in plant humanities.
• Assignment: A written 1-page abstract presenting research interest. This is submitted with the application for participation.

Course participation:

• 3 full days+ one guided tour: Total: 26 h
• A full paper-presentation (10-15 min.) with a collective discussion and feedback from peers and teachers based on the abstract (total 45 minutes)

(*PhD students are welcome to attend at the conference without participating in this PhD. masterclass. Those who wish to may submit an abstract to the conference on normal terms following the general conference call).

Language 

English

Lecturers

• Giovanni Aloi (professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago) ,
• Martha Fleming (associate professor Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Practice-based Art Studies IKK/KU and Statens Naturhistorisk Museum),
• Nick Shepherd (associate professor, Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies IKS/AU),
• Anette Vandsø (Associate professor, Environmental Media and Aesthetics IKK/AU)

Literature

Required readings: 630 pages from the following materials. Students are encouraged to read outside of their own disciplines and to share observations about these readings during the course. Students are encouraged to contribute their own pensum to this list. Some are distributed after the application deadline.

• Aloi, Giovanni. Botanical Revolutions: How Plants Changed the Course of Art. Los Angeles: Getty Institute, 2025. 225 pages.
• Andersen, Casper, and Martha Fleming (2025). 'Udforskningen af det koloniale arkiv i Danmarks Nationale Herbarium'. Slagmark - Tidsskrift for idéhistorie. No. 87, 2024. https://doi.org/10.7146/slagmark.vi.155316, 63-81, 28 pages
• Fleming, Martha. 'Afterword: what goes around, comes around - mobility's modernity' in Driver, Felix et al eds. Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation. London: UCL Press, 2021. 12 pages.
• Hedin, Gry. “From Flowers to Plants: Plant-Thinking in 19th Century Danish Flower Painting”. in Critical Plant Theories and Cultures: Exploring Human and More-than-human World Entanglements, Peggy Karpouzou and Nikoleta Zampaki, eds. Open Cultural Studies 8 (2024): 1-22, 20 pages
• Keogh, Luke. “The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved the Plant Kingdom”. Arnoldia 74, 4 (2017): pp 2-13. 12 pages.
• Leth-Espensen, Pernille, Gertrud Oelsner, Anette Vandsø (ed.) Plantefeber: Verden i vindueskarmen // Plante feber, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2025, 180 pages (most of it is images, so reading pages is far less!)
• Lewis-Jones, Kay E. ‘Introduction: people and plants’, Environment and Society: Advances in Research 7 (2016): pp 1-7. 8 pages.
• Myers N (2018) How to grow livable worlds: ten not-so-easy steps. In: Oliver-Smith K, ed, The World to Come: Art in the Age of the Anthropocene. Gainsville: Harn Museum of Art, 53–63, 11 pages. Also available on https://www.abc.net.au/religion/natasha-myers-how-to-grow-liveable-worlds:-ten-not-so-easy-step/11906548
• Shepherd, N., 'Walking as Embodied Research: Coloniality, Climate Change, and the 'Arts of Noticing''. Science, Technology and Society. 28, 1, 2023, 58-67, 9 pages
• Vandsø, Anette, Pernille Leth-Espensen, Anders Barfod, Gertrud Oelsner, Nick Shepherd: ”Skjulte Plantehistorier”//”Hidden Plant Stories”, SMK perspectives, 2025, 20 pages.

Suggestions for further reading

• Ahl, S.I. 2020. Naboplanter [Companion Plants]. Copenhagen: Laboratory for Aesthetics & Ecology. 75 Pages.
• Batsaki, Yota et al, eds, The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2017. 406 pages.
• Bleichmar, Daniela. Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. 288 pages.
• Cornish, Caroline and Felix Driver. ‘Specimens Distributed’: The circulation of objects from Kew’s Museum of Economic Botany, 1847–1914, Journal of the History of Collections, (2019) https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhz008
• Cowell, Carly, Pippin Anderson and Wendy Annecke. ‘Historic herbarium specimens as biocultural assets’, People and Nature 2 (2020): Pages 483-494. 12 pages.
• Di Paola, Marcello, ed. The Vegetal Turn: History, Concepts, Applications. New York, Springer Verlag, 2024. 306 pages.
• Flannery, Maura. In the Herbarium: The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. 336 pages.
• Gagliano, Monica, John C. Ryan and Patricia Vieira, eds. The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019). 352 pages.
• Ghosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. London: John Murray, 2021. 352 pages.
• Hall, M. 2011. Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. Albany: SUNY Press. 245 pages.
• Keogh, Luke. “The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved the Plant Kingdom”. Arnoldia 74, 4 (2017): pp 2-13. 12 pages.
• Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013). 408 pages.
• Lawrence, Anna M. 'Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography'. Progress in Human Geography 46(2), December 2021. pp 629-651. 22 pages.
• Marder, Michael. Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.  248 pages.
• Meeker, N. and A. Szabari. 2020. Radical Botany: Plants and Speculative Fiction. New York: Fordham University Press. 304 pages.
• Murphy, Kathleen S. “Collecting Slave Traders: James Petiver, Natural History, and the British Slave Trade”. The William and Mary Quarterly 70, nr. 4 (2013): pp 637-670. 37 pages.
• Schiebinger, Londa L. Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. 320 pages.
• Sparke, Penny. Nature Inside: Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. 224 pages.
• Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Vandsø, Anette og Nick Shepherd. “Expanded Aesthetics: Care, Attention, and the Everyday Plant”. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 33, nr. 69 (2025), 7 pages
• Vandsø, Anette, Gertrud Oelsner og Pernille Leth-Espensen: ”Hjemmets Flora: Og det grønne Ordrupgaard”, Bygningskunst og Kultur, nr. 8, 2025.
  
  

Venue
Copenhagen

Course type

Conference attendance including expert lectures, exhibition visits, guided tours, blended learning, project presentations and feedback sessions.

Course dates:

• 01 December 2025 12:00 - 20:00