Presents the annual theme
Food and Nurturance
with
Entangled Lives: Understanding Plants and Fungi through the Humanities and Sciences
Join us for an interdisciplinary roundtable discussion to explore the interdependence of human, animal, plant, and fungi lifeforms. Inspired by Merlin Sheldrake’s book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape our Futures, the UCI Humanities Center is collaborating with the UC Santa Cruz’s the Humanities Institute to consider how plants (which feed through photosynthesize) and fungi (that decompose organic matter) are both essential one another, to other forms of life, and have inspired human imagination.
Friday, May 15, 2026
Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway (SBSG) 1517
11:00 a.m. Roundtable Discussion
12:00 p.m. Reception
Attendees are invited to read chapter 3 of Entangled Life, entitled “The Intimacy of Strangers.”
Speakers
Laura Martin
Faculty Deep Read Faculty Lead and Continuing Lecturer in Literature and at Porter College, UCSC
Jon Pitt
Associate Professor, East Asian Studies and author of Botanical Imagination: Rethinking Plants in Modern Japan (Cornell 2025)
Kathleen Treseder
Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Lead Investigator of the Treseder Lab: Fungi, Ecosystems, & Global Change
Cosponsored by: UCI Humanities Center, Humanities Core, Libraries, and Environmental Humanities, Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts and Culture Initiative, UCSC’s The Humanities Institute, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute
For more information and for students interested in traveling to UCSC to attend the May 31 Deep Read conversation with Merlin Sheldrake, please contact Professor Judy Wu (j.wu@uci.edu)