ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Plant Humanities 3 - Case Study: The Eastern Mediterranean Plants

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Just as there are biodiversity hotspots, there are plant humanities “hotspots”: areas of biocultural diversity with a long history of significant and world-changing plant-human relationships. Within our emerging field, the relative absence of the Eastern Mediterranean as a geographical and conceptual center of inquiry is conspicuous, despite its long history of plants coexisting with intensive human presence, its role as a major center of crops domesticated and exported to other regions, the long record of systematic thinking about plants, and empires (such as the Byzantine and the Ottoman) that are often missing from the global picture of biocultural exchange. The proximity of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, with its long-standing attention to Eastern Mediterranean flora as a focus of collecting, research, and publication, is an additional incentive to focus this panel on the circulation of botanical knowledge and practice in the region.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Natural History Exploration in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Mediterranean - Sahar Bazzaz, College of the Holy Cross

• Producing and Circulating Botanical Knowledge in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Eastern Mediterranean (Ottoman Syria and Lebanon) - Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Northeastern University

• What Does Arabic Literature Bring to the Table of Ethnobotany and Holy Botany? - Mohammad Al-Zein, American University of Beirut

Session Organizers

• Yota Batsaki, Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University

• Elena Canadelli, University of Padova