Sean Wang Zi-Ming

Sean Wang Zi-Ming

Sean Wang Zi-Ming is an undergraduate at Harvard College studying Comparative Literature and Environmental Science and Public Policy. Raised in Singapore’s multicultural tropics, he is interested in literary and artistic depictions of the natural world and how these span across cultures. He has worked with the Plant Humanities Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks as a Plant Humanities Intern.

Watercolor illustration of Plumeria Acuminata commissioned by Scottish doctor and botanist William Roxburgh, late 18th century or early 19th century.

Plant of the Month

Plant of the Month: Frangipani

An ornamental plant whose white flowers hang over graveyards and temples in Southeast Asia presents complicated questions on national belonging and religious identity.

Editors' Picks

Science & Technology

Can We Build a Better Facebook?

Is it time to turn our back on Facebook? And if so, what social network could possibly replace it?

Education & Society

Jews vs. the “Judeo-Christian Tradition”

Since the 1930s, the idea of a “Judeo-Christian tradition” has been used in American politics, but some Jews have always taken issue with the entire concept.

Verbatim: Fredric Jameson

Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson offered a philosophy of late capitalism that gave us a language for talking about globalization and the end of modernism.

Politics & History

The Genocide Before the Shoah

For a century, Jews in Turkey have maintained a strategic silence when it comes to recognizing the Armenian genocide. Could that be changing?

Lost Literacies Strips Down the Dawn of Comics

In his new book, literary historian Alex Beringer demonstrates how the birth of the genre of printed comic long preceded the Sunday Funny Pages.