RHN 92/2026 | Call
Organisers: Nicole Archambeau (Colorado State University) and Yves Segers (KU Leuven)
1 – 5 June 2027, Grant Forks, USA
Deadline for Submissions: 20 October 2026
Panel Proposal:
Cultivating Boundaries. Wanted and Unwanted Life in Gardens and Fields from the Middle Ages to the Present
Annual conference Agricultural History Society 2027
Gardens and cultivated fields are multispecies spaces in which people draw boundaries between species that are protected, cared for, utilized, undesirable, productive or intrusive. Such categories were never fixed. Species protected or tolerated in one period or context could later be controlled or eradicated.
This session explores how these boundaries were produced and transformed from the Middle Ages to the present. Focusing on gardens, kitchen gardens and agricultural fields, it asks how farmers, gardeners, scientists and public authorities distinguished crops from weeds, beneficial animals from pests, and cultivated from wild or invasive species. How did experiential knowledge interact with natural history, agronomy, horticulture and, more recently, ecology and conservation? How did changing classifications translate into practices of cultivation, protection, exclusion and eradication?
We invite papers that historicize categories such as useful, harmful, wanted, unwanted, native and invasive, while also considering how plants and animals themselves challenged human attempts to order cultivated environments. Ultimately, the session asks: which forms of life were considered to belong in cultivated spaces, why, and who had the authority to decide?
Interested in participating? Email before 20 October 2026 to nicole.archambeau@colostate.edu and yves.segers@kuleuven.be