Avenali Lectures

Michael Pollan, Avenali Chair in the Humanities 2002-2003

“Cannabis, the Importance of Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire”
November 12, 2002

Webcast || Occasional Paper || Michael Pollan, contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and author, has done a range of work in journalism, environmentalism, and architecture. Pollan, originally from Long Island, earned his college degrees at Bennington College, Oxford University (Mansfield College), and Columbia University, where he received a masters in English in 1981. He served for many years as executive editor for Harper’s Magazine and writes a column on architecture for House & Garden.

His first book, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (1991), and his most recent, The Botany of Desire (2001), are among Pollan’s many works that examine the intersections between science and culture. Shorter works by Michael Pollan have been anthologized in collections such as Best American Essays and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. Pollan has lectured on environmentalism, gardening, and nature at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the New York Public Library, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York Horticultural Society, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and Dumbarton Oaks.

Pollan received the Borders Original Voice Award for the best non-fiction work of 2001. Other writing awards earned by Pollan include the John Burroughs prize for the best natural history essay in 1997, the QPB New Vision Award for Second Nature, and the 2000 Reuters-World Conservation Union Global Award for Environmental Journalism for reporting on genetic engineering.

Pollan is Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.