This volume is a critical examination of the sudden burgeoning of plant studies across the
disciplines. From ecocriticism that features fantastical plants, biological studies and concerns
about changing plant biodiversity, environmental focus on the role of plants in mitigating climate
change, neo-liberal campaigns to offset carbon through tree plantings, and popular tropes of
thinking and feeling plants, we see plants as front and center of imaginations for planetary
futures.

As scholars who have tracked the shifting focus from human to animal studies and now
plant studies, we believe something is afoot. We examine the current moment through an
examination of the histories that have brought us here, a theorization of the current moment, and
finally the lessons we can learn through such analyses.

Dr. Sushmita Chatterjee is Professor and Chair in the Department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University. Her research interests include postcolonial theory, feminist and queer theory, and animal studies. Her recent publications include a co-edited volume Meat! A Transnational Analysis (Duke University Press, 2021), and monograph Postcolonial Hauntings: Play and Transnational Feminism (University of Illinois Press, 2024).

Banu Subramaniam is the Luella LaMer Professor and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. Banu is author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press 2024), Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019), and Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014).