Monika Wulz: Catalogue data in Spring Semester 2017

Name Dr. Monika Wulz
Address
Professur für Wissenschaftsforsch.
ETH Zürich, RZ G 2
Clausiusstrasse 59
8092 Zürich
SWITZERLAND
Telephone+41 44 632 67 73
E-mailmonika.wulz@gess.ethz.ch
DepartmentHumanities, Social and Political Sciences
RelationshipLecturer

NumberTitleECTSHoursLecturers
851-0157-71LOf Plants and Men Restricted registration - show details
Number of participants limited to 40.

Particularly suitable for students of D-BIOL, D-USYS.
3 credits2SN. Guettler, M. Wulz
AbstractThe seminar considers the history of a remarkable relation: plants and men. For understanding the human condition the engagement with plants, their morphology, and their locomotion was crucial in different periods. In this course we examine the relation between knowledge on plants and conceptions of the human in historical and philosophical perspective.
ObjectiveIn recent years various forms of the "non-human" - animals, objects or monsters - have strongly shaped cultural studies and their theories (such as animal studies or actor-network theory). Plants, however, are significantly underresearched especially as over the course of history they have repeatedly stimulated ideas of what it meant to be human. This course traces different conceptions of the plant-human relation since the Early Modern period, ranging from botany to ecology, philosophy, art, and popular literature. How did (knowledge on) plants shape anthropological, social, political, and economic concepts? How have "encounters" with plants changed our views of the human and the social? And in which ways does knowledge on plants still influence our visions and dystopias of cohabitation and society (for instance "rhizom" or "invasive species")?