Participant Info

First Name
Holly
Last Name
Gruntner
Country
United States
State
VA Virginia
Affiliation
College of William & Mary
Website URL
https://www.wm.edu/as/history/gradprogram/graduate-student-bios/gruntner_h.php
Keywords
Early America, History of Science, Early Botany, Kitchen Gardens, Labor History
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
other credentials

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am an advanced PhD candidate in William & Mary’s Harrison Ruffin Tyler Department of History. I have an MA in History, also from William & Mary. My BA is from the University of Minnesota-Morris. Prior to graduate school, I worked in the Congressional Relations Office of the Library of Congress for three years.

I am writing a dissertation with the working title, “Some People of Skil and Curiousity:” Kitchen Gardens and Scientific Knowledge in Early America, 1650-1830. My dissertation parses the intellectual and manual garden labors of non-elite people, viewing even the smallest garden plots as scientific laboratories, units of intense and extensive intellectual work, experiment, and exchange. I argue that discoveries and practices originating with these common gardens and gardeners transcended households and communities and show how this knowledge served as the basis for published and otherwise formalized scientific discourse of the day.

Recent Publications

“A Unicorn in the Archives,” Past is Present: The American Antiquarian Society Blog, August 2021: https://pastispresent.org/2021/fellowsfinds/a-unicorn-in-the-archives/

“Lists and Linnaean Taxonomy in Jean Skipwith’s Papers,” An Acquired Taste: What’s Happening in William & Mary’s Special Collections, March 2021: https://libraries.wm.edu/blog/special-collections/post/54213

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
North America
Expertise by Chronology
17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Early Modern
Expertise by Topic
Environment, Food History, Labor, Science