Arizona State University (ASU) is known for both enormous size and scale, as well as excellence in research and innovation. These attributes are embodied in the ideal of the “New American University.” ASU Library, as a partner in the New American University, has reorganized itself, completed a large-scale renovation of its main library building, and created interdisciplinary divisions of librarians and other professionals, backed up by subject “knowledge teams” that address specific research needs of faculty and students. As a result, the library has become involved in nontraditional projects across the university. This article is useful for libraries seeking to remain relevant and align themselves with institutional priorities.

Drawing on collective biography, memory work, and diffractive analysis, this chapter examines childhood memories of our entanglements with plants. By approaching research as a ceremony, our goal is to reanimate the relationships we have shared with plants and places, illuminating multiple intra-actions and weaving different worlds together.  Our collective ceremony of re-membering brings into focus how plants called us forward, evoked our gratitude and reciprocity, shared knowledge, and offered comfort, companionship, love, belongingness, and understanding throughout life. The process of our collective re-membering and writing has turned into a series of ceremonial gatherings and practices, bringing forth vivid memories, poetic expressions, and creative drawings.  As humans, we have often (re)acted to plants’ generous gifts in meaningful gestures and communications that have co-created and made visible our deeply felt inter-species love and care.

This article combines collective biography, diffractive analysis, and speculative fabulation to weave together
the authors’ childhood memories of “common worlding.” Our collective biography brings into focus how we
engaged in common worlding in our childhoods through dreaming, metamorphosis, and play by tactfully
moving across different worlds and learning with the human and more-than-human others we encountered. As
we foreground childhood memory and its potential to reimagine pasts, presents, and futures, we explore what
kind of conditions are necessary to (re)attune ourselves to the multiple worlds around us in order to maintain
and nurture children’s—and our own—other-worldly connections.