Hosted by The Plant Initiative
Free - Optional Donation Recommended
This interactive conversation features Dr. Joela Jacobs, a leader in the field of plant studies, talking about this growing area of study and her wide ranging and innovative work exploring new and interesting plant-related themes.
The conversation will introduce Dr. Jacobs's research on phytopoetics and explore questions such as: What does scholarship on plants in literary and cultural studies look like? What is the state of the field of plant humanities - and how are those trends varying in the United States and Europe? What is the relationship of plant studies to areas like the environmental humanities and animal studies? How can interested folks connect with this work and each other, or otherwise contribute to it and get involved? How are plants themselves inspiring the networking and methods of this research?
The conversation will be moderated by plant studies scholar Dr. Laura Pustarfi, a Plant Initiative board member.
Join us for this free interactive program!
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About Joela Jacobs
Dr. Joela Jacobs is Associate Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona. She co-founded the Literary and Cultural Plant Studies Network in 2016, facilitating it since, and she is the new editor of the open-access journal Plant Perspectives. Her research focuses on the intersection of 19th to 21st-century German literature with Plant Studies, Animal Studies, Environmental Humanities, Jewish Studies, the History of Sexuality, and the History of Science.
Books include the monograph Animal, Vegetal, Marginal: The German Literary Grotesque from Panizza to Kafka (Indiana University Press, 2025), Plant Poetics: The Literary Forms and Functions of the Vegetal (Brill, 2025, co-edited with Isabel Kranz and Solvejg Nitzke), and Microbium: The Neglected Lives of Micro-Matter (punctum books, 2023, co-edited with Agnes Malinowska), in addition to four journal special issues on various themes (e.g., on the literary lives of plants in Literatur für Leser:innen) as well as a cultural studies companion to plants in German (Metzler 2026, co-edited with Isabel Kranz). She has published articles on a range of topics—from cultures of environmentalism to phytopoetics.
For more information about her publications, see here.