Recent research on plants within the sciences and humanities has not only transformed how we understand plants. It has overturned a range of concepts that are central to our understanding of ourselves and our world — from consciousness, memory, learning, intelligence, and behavior to adaptation, environment, and planetary ecologies.

Green Heresies gathered scholars and artists in a collective, multidisciplinary exploration of the critical implications of developments in the study of plants. This conference consisted of a series of presentations, discussions, screenings, and keynote lectures aimed at delineating a “critical ecology” adequate to the challenges and insights of “plant studies” for thinking the basic questions and paradigms across the sciences and humanities.

This event was organized by the Phytological Critique research project at the Neubauer Collegium, with additional support from the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization (CEGU), the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Film Studies Center, and the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies, Art History, and Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago.