The garden politic : global plants and botanical nationalism in nineteenth-century America / Mary Kuhn.

By:

Kuhn, Mary [author.]

Material type: Text

TextSeries: America and the long 19th centuryPublisher: New York : New York University Press, [2023]Copyright date: ©2023Description: xi, 255 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 23 cmContent type:

text
still image

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9781479820122
1479820121
9781479820153
1479820156

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

History

LOC classification:

QK46 .K75 2023

Contents:

Introduction. A case for plants -- Botanical nationalism -- Botanical disruption -- Botanical agency -- Botanical abolitionism -- Botanical societies -- Conclusion. An ethos of collectivity.

Summary: "How worldwide plant circulation and new botanical ideas enabled Americans to radically re-envision politics and society. The Garden Politic argues that botanical practices and discourses helped nineteenth-century Americans engage pressing questions of race, gender, settler colonialism, and liberal subjectivity. In the early republic, ideas of biotic distinctiveness helped fuel narratives of American exceptionalism. By the nineteenth century, however, these ideas and narratives were unsettled by the unprecedented scale at which the United States and European empires prospected for valuable plants and exchanged them across the globe. Drawing on ecocriticism, New Materialism, environmental history, and the history of science--and crossing disciplinary and national boundaries--The Garden Politic shows how new ideas about cultivation and plant life could be mobilized to divergent political and social ends. Reading the work of influential nineteenth-century authors from a botanical perspective, Mary Kuhn recovers how domestic political issues were entangled with the global circulation and science of plants. The diversity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's own gardens contributed to the evolution of her racial politics and abolitionist strategies. Nathaniel Hawthorne's struggles in his garden inspired him to write stories in which plants defy human efforts to impose order. Radical scientific ideas about plant intelligence and sociality prompted Emily Dickinson to imagine a human polity that embraces kinship with the natural world. Yet other writers, including Frederick Douglass, cautioned that the most prominent political context for plants remained plantation slavery. The Garden Politic reveals how the nineteenth century's extractive political economy of plants contains both the roots of our contemporary environmental crisis and the seeds of alternative political visions"-- Publisher's description.

Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 3 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Circulating Books	Pennsylvania Horticultural Society	New Books	QK46 .K75 2023 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		3182700023000

Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-242) and index.

Introduction. A case for plants -- Botanical nationalism -- Botanical disruption -- Botanical agency -- Botanical abolitionism -- Botanical societies -- Conclusion. An ethos of collectivity.

"How worldwide plant circulation and new botanical ideas enabled Americans to radically re-envision politics and society. The Garden Politic argues that botanical practices and discourses helped nineteenth-century Americans engage pressing questions of race, gender, settler colonialism, and liberal subjectivity. In the early republic, ideas of biotic distinctiveness helped fuel narratives of American exceptionalism. By the nineteenth century, however, these ideas and narratives were unsettled by the unprecedented scale at which the United States and European empires prospected for valuable plants and exchanged them across the globe. Drawing on ecocriticism, New Materialism, environmental history, and the history of science--and crossing disciplinary and national boundaries--The Garden Politic shows how new ideas about cultivation and plant life could be mobilized to divergent political and social ends. Reading the work of influential nineteenth-century authors from a botanical perspective, Mary Kuhn recovers how domestic political issues were entangled with the global circulation and science of plants. The diversity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's own gardens contributed to the evolution of her racial politics and abolitionist strategies. Nathaniel Hawthorne's struggles in his garden inspired him to write stories in which plants defy human efforts to impose order. Radical scientific ideas about plant intelligence and sociality prompted Emily Dickinson to imagine a human polity that embraces kinship with the natural world. Yet other writers, including Frederick Douglass, cautioned that the most prominent political context for plants remained plantation slavery. The Garden Politic reveals how the nineteenth century's extractive political economy of plants contains both the roots of our contemporary environmental crisis and the seeds of alternative political visions"-- Publisher's description.