HPS Cultivation Greenhouse: Policing migrant plants, pests, and peoples

The Greenhouse is a meeting place for students and researchers interested in the history and sociology of plants, food, agriculture and environment to explore how science and technology shape what we grow and eat. The regular programme of papers and discussions is curated in conjunction with the project From Collection to Cultivation, which is funded by the Wellcome Trust.

In Lent Term 2023, our reading and conversation will focus on the history of plant pests in relation to human migration and racial categorizations, drawing especially on Jeannie Natsuko Shinozuka, Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

On Monday, January 30, we will discuss:

• Chapter 1, Shinozuka, Biotic Borders (“San José Scale: Contested Origins at the Turn of the Century”)
• Philip Pauly, “The Beauty and the Menace of the Japanese Cherry Trees: Conflicting Visions of American Ecological Independence,” Isis 87, no. 1 (1996): 51–73.

The reading group is open to all. We meet fortnightly during Cambridge term time in the HPS Board Room (Free School Lane, Cambridge) and on Zoom to discuss papers or presentations. Write to hps-cultivation@lists.cam.ac.uk to subscribe to regular updates on readings and to get access to the Zoom link.