Vegetal Forms: Knowing Place and Time Through Plants

Beyer will be researching how 17th- and 18th-century herbariums and accounts of bioprospecting voyages shaped the field of classical botany into one that upheld colonial empire throughout the 19th century. What “translations” (spatial, linguistic, cultural) or mistranslations of botanical knowledge were done by colonial bioprospectors? How did they become the basis of Western scientific fact?

Bruce will be asking such questions as: How do ruderal encounters populate virtual urban spaces? How do ruderal plants make themselves known in digital realms? How is the form of the ruderal, so closely tied to physicality and urbanity, preserved or transformed within these new, “imaginary” settings?

Cummings is working on a long term, multimedia, and research-based visual art project that considers the palm tree as an avatar of climate change, invasive species, migration and colonization. He approaches the palm tree as a symbol in work that includes sculptures, paintings, and woven works on paper.

Eddy is a poet interested in exploring the interconnectedness of plant and human life by making visual poems that build on the tradition of "herbals," examples of which can be found in the Smith College rare books collection.

Ferguson’s new book project examines how Arabic-speakers produced, confronted, and managed the problem of biological diversity in the Levant across the long nineteenth century. Entitled The Living World: Histories of Nature in the Arab East, it shows how people tried to understand, collect, and taxonomize plant life in Beirut and Jerusalem between 1830 and 1914, through natural history and natural theology as well as the emerging modern life sciences in Arabic.

Gold’s research explores the intersection between queer botany and human entanglements—with hopes of creating a gentle guide to “lichen insight.” Gold’s research questions include: How might encounters with lichens—with a lens of queer theory—spur possibility and change in the way we think and move through the world? What happens when we build relationships with these overlooked, yet ubiquitous and incredible creatures?

Golé’s main subject of investigation is phyllotaxis, or plant pattern formation and analysis, as evidenced in his new co-authored book Do Plants Know Math? Unwinding the Story of Plant Spirals, from Leonardo da Vinci to Now. He plans to create an on-campus exhibit by the same name with illustrations and exercises from the book.

Guswa’s research focuses on understanding and predicting the interactions between vegetation form and the partitioning and presence of water. His questions range from “how does canopy architecture affect the precipitation that reaches a forest floor?” to “how do landscape changes—say from forest to farm—affect streamflows downstream?”

Hauser, a choreographer who works with improvised group forms in performance, is co-creating a new work Indifferent Forrest with BebeMiller Company. The work premieres at Harlem Stage (NYC) in May 2025. The Kahn will serve as an incubator for several foundational inquiries for the piece including: How does the act of tracking and reading vegetal forms shape human behavior?

Hoag’s research examines what plants can teach us about the conditions of life on earth. He is currently working on two projects. One focuses on the phylogeography of the daisy family (Compositae) and another examines the role of plant conservatories in shaping human conceptions of place under modernity.

Labhsetwar is working to promote implementation of agroecological practices in New England which focus on improving ecological outcomes of agricultural practices without compromising yields. He is studying how to grow diverse plant forms together on farmland to increase biodiversity, resilience and design cropping systems which favor facilitation over competition among different plants.

Maltz will be researching how the process of creating inks and pigments from local plants can deepen our understanding of plant biology and our connection to place.

Monserrati is currently working on a book manuscript titled “Familiar Grapes,” in which he concentrates on the landscapes of the vineyards (vine-scapes) and the grapevines as a cultural symbol to mark Colonial territories as Western.

Pierce is at work on a book project exploring the traffic between institutions of scientific and medical knowledge production in the fin-de-siècle French empire. What knowledge about humans, animals, plants, and microbes could only be made in the space between institutions, or through the circulation of objects, images, and bodies between and across the natural history museum, the experimental medical laboratory, the art museum, or the botanic garden?

Siepel has been an artist-in-residence at the MacLeish Field Station since 2019, working on a long-term project entitled To Understand a Tree, which focuses on the dignity of a living tree, its network of eco-systemic relationships, and the ubiquity of the material of wood in design and daily life.