Unexpected Flourishing: Growth from Decay in the Mycelial University

Unexpected Flourishing is a book about rotting logs, higher education, and critical hope. Katina L. Rogers draws on the hope and possibility of mycorenewal to ask what possibilities for unexpected flourishing we can find within higher education’s decay, and how we can cultivate conditions where these possibilities can thrive: a mycelial university.

In a forest, the mycorrhizal network connects fungal mycelia and plant roots to pipe nutrients among species, fostering a complex and interdependent ecosystem. These multispecies ecologies thrive even (or especially) in less-than-pristine conditions. What if that kind of collectivitism were a baseline for understanding and sharing scholarly work? Just as mushrooms spring up from the rot of the forest floor and return nutrients to depleted soil, perhaps something new might emerge in higher education from the decomposing remnants of what came before. Higher education in the US is a ravaged landscape of diminished public funding and even governmental hostility, exploitative labor practices, students crippled by debt, and endless stories of racism, ableism, and sexual harassment—and yet, beauty and curiosity continue to emerge.

Unexpected Flourishing surveys the decay of the higher education landscape as it is now while offering a speculative consideration of what might be possible if we—scholars, practitioners, administrators, teachers of all kinds—adopted different value structures and different ways of making meaning in community. The underlying focal point is one of abundance, sustenance, and joy.