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Scientific illustrations of tobacco, witch hazel and venus flytrap in mostly black and white on natural yellow toned paper
William Bartram’s illustrations of tobacco, witch hazel and Venus flytrap, 1803. Source: American Philosophical Society
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Scientific illustrations of tobacco, witch hazel and venus flytrap in mostly black and white on natural yellow toned paper
William Bartram’s illustrations of tobacco, witch hazel and Venus flytrap, 1803. Source: American Philosophical Society

Adventive America

Follow the Plants
Thursday, January 29, 2026 - Friday, January 30, 2026

Kleinman Energy Forum, Fisher Fine Arts Library, 4th Floor

220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia PA

Free and open to the public
Register
Presented By

About

Adventive America places the forthcoming 250th anniversary of the United States into a broader international context by examining plants and their agency in nation-building. This nontraditional lens explores collectors, collections, and global botanical exchanges between the United States, Indigenous nations, Britain, Spain, Japan, and China, from the early American republic to the present day. Whether shipped in transatlantic Bartram’s boxes in the eighteenth century, showcased at the 1876 Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, emergent in the weedy ballast grounds along the Delaware River, or exchanged as part of the traditional seed-saving practices of Indigenous peoples or immigrant communities, plants from around the globe serve as proxies for our own international migrations and as carriers of cultural meaning in our landscapes. “Following the plants” reveals fraught layers of transnational and ethnobotanical relations and upends false binaries of what it means to be native or alien, exotic or adventive, in the ongoing construction of nationhood.  

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.

Keynote Lecture
Schedule
Thu January 29, 2026
6:30pm - 8:00pm
Keynote Lecture

Banu Subramaniam

Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Wellesley College

Dr. Subramaniam is an interdisciplinary scholar, trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist, who embraces tools from the humanities and social sciences to help shape the field of Feminist Science and Technology Studies. Her recent research rethinks the field and practice of botany in relation to histories of colonialism and xenophobia and explores the wide travels of scientific theories, ideas, and concepts as they relate to migration and invasive species. She is the author of Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism (University of Washington Press, 2024).

Symposium
Schedule
Fri January 30, 2026
9:30am-10:00am
Registration
10:00am-10:30am
Welcome & Framing

Catherine Seavitt, Meyerson Professor and Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture

10:30am-12:00pm
Panel 1: NATION

Richard McCourt, Curator Emeritus of Botany, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Chantel E. White, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Rosalyn LaPier, Professor, Department of History, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Moderated by Jessica Varner, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture

12:00pm-1:00pm
Interlude: BALLAST GROUND

Maria Thereza Alves

Artist

Maria Thereza Alves is an artist, activist, filmmaker, and writer from São Paulo, Brazil. Her work investigates the histories and circumstances of particular locations to give witness to silenced histories. Her projects are researched-based and develop out of her interactions with the physical and social environments of the places she studies. Her long-term art project Seeds of Change studies colonialism, slavery, migration, and global commerce.

1:00pm-2:00pm
Break
2:00pm-3:30pm
Panel 2: EMPIRE

Anthony Sorrentino, CEO, Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia

Vanessa Grossman, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Chelsey Armstrong, Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Chair of Indigenous Studies, Simon Fraser University

Moderated by Jared Farmer, Professor and Chair, Department of History

3:30pm-4:00pm
Break
4:00pm-5:30pm
Panel 3: HOME

Tessa Desmond, Director, The Seed Farm at Princeton, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

Ally Mitchem Hansen, PhD, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Columbia University

Shurui Zhang, Lecturer, Department of Landscape Architecture, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

Moderated by Azzurra Cox, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture

5:30pm-6:00pm
Closing Reception