In this talk, Astrid Møller-Olsen shares her ongoing research on how contemporary Sinophone works of fiction use botanical characters, plant imagery and green environments to create alternative realities, explore possible futures and deal with traumatic pasts. Through an interdisciplinary theoretical framework based on critical plant studies, environmental humanities and gender studies, Dr Møller-Olsen shows how plants figure as partly human monsters, planetary partners, or ecological avengers in works by Chi Hui 迟卉, Yan Ge 颜歌, Dorothy Tse’s 謝曉虹, Alai 阿来, Chu T’ien-hsin 朱天心, and Dung Kai-cheung 董啟章.

Dr Astrid Møller-Olsen is an international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council.