Slow Seminar- Thus Spoke the Plant

Happy Spring quarter everyone!

SEACoast is delighted to invite you to our first Slow Seminar in Spring. We will discuss Monica Gagliano’s Thus Spoke the Plant (North Atlantic Books, 2018) on April 27, Wednesday, 8-10am Pacific Daylight Time (yes, it’s a morning event for those in California.) We are thrilled to have Dr. Kat Gutierrez, Assistant Professor in History at UCSC and currently Mellon fellow at the New York Botanical Garden, to be our discussant.

Participants are asked to read the book in advance. If you plan to attend, please fill out this form. The Zoom link will be sent out at least an hour before the event. Please feel free to circulate the attached flyer.

We hope to see you there!

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A few words about Thus Spoke the Plant from its publisher:

“In this “phytobiography”–a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant–research scientist Monica Gagliano reveals the dynamic role plants play in genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people–beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own ‘voices’ and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has re-ignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.”

For more info about the author, please visit Monica Gagliano’s personal website:
https://www.monicagagliano.com

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