Tag: Yota Batsaki

  • Thursday, April 16, 12:00 noon – 1:00 pm Eastern – Poisons & Remedies, Online

    Join the New York Botanic Garden on April 16 online for Poisons & Remedies, the second panel of our 2025 Plant Humanities Conversations, co-organized between NYBG’s Humanities Institute and Dumbarton Oaks. In this session, Dr. Michael Balick (NYBG), Dr. Hannah Cole (UCSC), and Dr. Luciana Martins (Birbeck) explore plant stories of poisons and remedies as they feature in ethnobotanical research, literature, and botanical collections.  Dr. Balick will share examples of how plants have been identified and used as poisonous from Western and non-Western medical traditions; Dr. Martins will dive into the economic botany collections at Kew to uncover stories of remedies in them; and Dr. Cole will explore literary representations of plants and toxicity.

    The panel will be moderated by Yota Batsaki, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, and Lucas Mertehikian, Director of NYBG’s Humanities Institute.This event is free and open to the public. Register in the link HERE to receive a Zoom invitation.

  • Wednesday, November 8, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern – Plant Humanities Initiative, Online

    Join the American Horticultural Society and Yota Batsaki, PhD, Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, online on November 8 to learn about Plant Humanities, a new, interdisciplinary field that explores and communicates the unparalleled significance of plants to human culture. The Plant Humanities Initiative collaborates to produce a digital platform of rare historic materials that document plants, building an accessible resource for well-researched, widespread horticultural storytelling. Batsaki will suggest how plant history from a spectrum of fields relates to contemporary topics of climate change, environmental degradation, and cross-cultural exchange. This virtual program will include a presentation, conversation with facilitator, and opportunities for participants’ questions.    

    Yota Batsaki, PhD, is the Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard University research institute, library, museum, and garden located in Washington, DC. As principal investigator for the institute’s Plant Humanities Initiative, Batsaki applies her expertise in comparative literature to the interdisciplinary study of plants and their significance to human culture. She has published essays and co-edited volumes on the intersection of history, literature, and culture, including The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century.

    $10 for AHS members, $15 for nonmembers. Register at www.ahsgardening.org