In this course, we will embed ourselves in the “feral ecosystems” of New York City. Our topic of study will be WEEDS—the subversive plant life that grows on the outskirts of human attention and in spite of best efforts at their eradication.

We will take plant blindness—our cultural oversight of the diversity, mystery, and uniqueness of flora—as a starting point and an obstacle. Guided in our looking by the theoretical frameworks of Bruno Latour, Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, we’ll let these “unwanted” species become our guides to the city’s overlooked ecologies. What happens when we shift our awareness toward medicinal mugwort pushing up through sidewalk seams, burdock hooking itself to our clothes, or Japanese knotweed weaving across the borders set by chain-link fences? How might these plants, often dismissed as invaders or nuisances, teach us about adaptive intelligence, survival, and reciprocity  and become partners in imagining multispecies urban futures?

Through fieldwork, roundtable discussions, and collaborative art making, we’ll experiment with reclaiming forms of embodied noticing. Our time together will culminate in a collaborative urban-weed field guide that invites students to translate attention into intimacy, rendering these feral companions as thriving co-inhabitants of our stories, our health, and our shared futures.

Led by educator Isabelle Groenewegen and artist-organizer Amy Pekal.