Farm for Change - Plenary Speeches and Speakers

Plenary Speeches and Speakers

Plenary 1: Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability

Speaker: Abby Goode｜Associate Professor of English and Sustainability Studies at Plymouth State University
Date: 9 am, June 12 (Friday)
Venue: 1F Conference Room, Institute of European and America Studies, Academia Sinica

Abstract

This talk will discuss the lesser-known origins of sustainability thinking and the entanglement of racism, eugenics, and agrarianism in American literary history. It will ask us to reexamine the benevolence of American environmental thought and some long-cherished agrarian ideals.

Abby Goode

Dr. Abby Goode is Associate Professor of English and Sustainability Studies at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She is the author of Agrotopias: An American Literary History of Sustainability (UNC Press, 2022). Currently, she is writing a book about racist and antiracist climate thinking in American literature.

Plenary 2: Seeds of Relation: Planting as World-Making from Braiding Sweetgrass to Tayal Millet Ark and Pangcah Foraging Ecologies

Speaker: Hsinya Huang｜Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
Date: TBA
Venue: 1F Conference Room, Institute of European and America Studies, Academia Sinica

Abstract

This keynote explores Indigenous seeds and planting as foundations for alternative worldmaking across the transpacific, bringing into conversation Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, Tayal Millet Ark Action, and Pangcah (Amis) ethnobotanical knowledge as documented by Wu Hsueh-yueh, widely known as Taiwan’s “godmother of foraged plants.” Across these diverse contexts, seeds emerge not merely as biological units of reproduction but as carriers of (trans)Indigenous memory, relationality, and ethical obligation.

Kimmerer’s Indigenous teachings frame planting as a reciprocity-based practice in which the nourishment of sweetgrass reflects a worldview structured around gratitude, kinship, and ecological responsibility. The Millet Ark, a contemporary Tayal revival Action in Indigenous Taiwan, similarly positions seeds as cultural anchors and vehicles of resistance against colonial agriculture. By preserving heirloom varieties and reviving millet cultivation, the Action articulates a seed-centered ethics of resilience, biodiversity, and communal stewardship.

Complementing these perspectives, Wu Hsueh-yueh’s extensive work on Pangcah’s edible wild landscape illuminates the Pangcah practice of nosa’—relational foraging grounded in seasonal attunement, respectful harvesting practices, and an understanding of plants as co-inhabitants of a shared environment. Wu’s ethnobotanical work revitalizes Indigenous plant knowledge while challenging colonial and modernist hierarchies of cultivated versus wild foods.

By juxtaposing these seed-centered epistemologies, this keynote identifies a convergent agrarian humanism that values care, regeneration, and multispecies reciprocity. Together, they offer a powerful critique of extractive agricultural paradigms and propose a transpacific framework for “planting otherwise”: cultivating land, community, and futurity through practices rooted in humility, ecological intimacy, and an ethics of mutual flourishing.

Hsinya Huang

Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature, National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. She is former Dean of Arts and Humanities and Provost of Academic Affairs and Faculty Advancement, NSYSU, and served as Director General of International Cooperation and Science Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 2018-19. She is the author or editor of books and articles on transnational and transpacific studies, Native American and Pacific Islander literatures, Indigenous and Sinophone studies, and humanities for the environment. She serves on the Advisory Board of The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Bloomsbury World Literature Series, Oxford Intersections: Environmental Change and Human Experience, and Routledge Series on Transnational Indigenous Perspectives and on the Editorial Board of Transmotion: A Journal of Vizenorian Indigenous Studies. Her current research project investigates first foods in the trans-Pacific Indigenous literatures.