Engendering Gardens
Save the Dates
Gender Week 2012: October 15th-19th
Gender Week Events
Wednesday, October 17th:
Architecture and Diversity Symposium
Thursday, October 18:
Keynote address by Robert Pogue Harrison
The Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature at Stanford University, Robert Harrison is the author of many acclaimed books, including Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (1992), The Dominion of the Dead (2005), and, most recently, Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (2008). More information
Call for Work
If you would like to propose a program or to share information about your research, teaching or community activism related to “Engendering Gardens,” please
contact Professor Kari Winter, director of the Gender Institute.
More About the Theme
If you would like to propose a program or to share information about your research, teaching or community activism related to “Engendering Gardens,” please
contact Professor Kari Winter, director of the Gender Institute.
More About the Theme
Engender: to bring into existence, create, procreate, propagate, originate, generate Gardens:
Urban agriculture, community gardens, public parks
Garden chemistry and land reclamation
Fertility, fecundity, nature, food
Food systems, food policy, botany,
international development, locavore movement
Literary gardens
Mythic gardens
Gardens and modernity, capitalism, world trade, colonialism, globalization, travel, war
Ethics, aesthetics, and philosophies of gardening
Human bodies as gardens: creativity, sexuality, sensuality (the five senses)
Gardens, seasons, life cycles: waste, mortality, sustainability
Imagining our mothers’ (and fathers’) gardens: ancestry, heritage, generations
Indigenous gardens, immigrant gardens, refugee gardens
Music and sounds of gardening
Gardens as sites of refuge, sanctuary, and repose amidst turbulence
"Home," Leslie Fry
Representative research questions:
How do we generate and sustain cultures of earthly care (caring, care-taking, compassion, responsibility, community)?
How can we cultivate healthy policies and practices in relation to agriculture, urban planning, public space, and food systems?
How can we help to democratize access to food and water locally and globally?
If we think of life in terms of gardens, how might we think freshly about “waste” (excess, decay, garbage, pollution, “wasted time,” mortality, recycling)?
What are the relationships between gardens, time, and stories?
In other words, what are the relationships between material landscapes (plots of land, cityscapes), the temporal plots of life and death, and the plots of stories (the narrative trajectories of literature, religion, politics, economics, and law)?
If we imagine the erotic as the engine of creativity as well as procreation, how can we, though research, education, community engagement, and public policy, cultivate understanding, empowerment, health, and freedom in relation to human bodies and sexualities?
What do gardens have to do with education in general and with the landscape of UB in particular?
Engendering Gardens Planning Committee:
Kari Winter (Chair), American Studies & Gender Institute
Despina Stratigakos, Architecture & Gender Institute
Lynda Schneekloth, Architecture
Samina Raja, Urban and Regional Planning
Sara Metcalf, Geography
Carine Mardorossian, English
Laura Mangan, Civic Engagement
Stacy Hubbard, English
Joe Gardella, Chemistry
Cristina Delgado, Urban and Regional Planning
Sierra Adare-Tasiwoopa Api, American Studies