Dr. Michael Hathaway is Professor of Anthropology, Associate Member of the School for International Studies, and the Director of Simon Fraser University’s David Lam Centre for Asian Studies (www.michaeljhathaway.net). He will be presenting his newly published book What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make.

This talk introduces the second book in an academic trilogy that began with Anna L. Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World. In this talk, Michael J. Hathaway draws from his recent book. He delves into the worlds of fungi, showing us how they literally enabled our green planet and carry out active forms of liveliness in the everyday, acting as “world-makers.” Moving from fungi as an enigmatic kingdom that transformed the ancient Earth to the realm of the fascinating matsutake mushroom on the Tibetan Plateau, Hathaway reveals the ways these mushrooms are creating their own multispecies encounters, with and without humans. This forthcoming book challenges a legacy of human exceptionalism and human supremacy that is dominant in Western thinking and offers ways to notice the creative liveliness of all organisms, from mammals to mushrooms.