© Wendy S. Walters
On Tuesday, September 29, Seeds of Diaspora editors and authors held a discussion panel at Columbia University’s Heyman Center. They introduced the eclectic collection of essays, which follows seeds as they bear witness to migration, resilience, and transformation, and brings together intertwined histories of human settlement and plants amid cultural and climatic change.
Five contributors—Lucas Mertehikian, Naeem Mohaiemen, Dorothy M. Peteet, Wendy S. Walters, and Lynnette Widder—discussed their investigations, which consider dramatic, even if subtle, changes. The conversation ranged from postwar landscapes reclaimed by plant life to cultural landscapes overwritten by city planners; seeds in glacial ice to those carried along routes of labor and exile; and trees appropriated as constituents of fictive homelands to plants as sentient beings. The contributors recognized seeds both as biological and analogical subjects, and asked how we might reconceive the relationships between human and more-than-human.
A recording of the event will be provided shortly—stay tuned!
Did you miss this event but would love to hear our editors and authors talk about the book? We got you covered:
Fern Thompsett and Darby Minow Smith will speak Shakespeare & Co.—an independent bookstore in Missoula, Montana! This free event will be held on Thursday, October 29, 2026, at 6:00 pm. Make sure to join them if you’re around!
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© Wendy S. Walters On Tuesday, September 29, Seeds of Diaspora editors and authors held a discussion panel at Columbia University’s Heyman
