Digging the Past: How and Why to Imagine Seventeenth-Century Agriculture (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020), by English professor Frances Dolan, examines histories of food and work, science, and reading and writing practices to offer case studies of projects heralded as agricultural innovations in the 17th century and today, such as composting and soil amendment, local food, natural wine and hedgerows.

Professor Dolan joined the UC Davis faculty as Professor of English in 2003. Before coming to Davis, she taught at Miami University, as well as the University of Chicago and Columbia University. Her research focuses on early modern English literature and history (1500-1700). While her interests are wide-ranging, she has a long-standing commitment to Shakespeare and his contemporary dramatists. In 2004-5, she served as the President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She has also edited six Shakespeare plays. In addition, she has published five books and numerous articles in journals and edited collections. You can find internal and external links to some of those publications below. An award-winning teacher, she offers courses including Shakespeare, Literature by Women, and Children's Literature. 

In Digging the Past:  How and Why to Imagine Seventeenth-Century Agriculture, chapters on composting and soil amendment, local food, natural wine, and hedges reveal how the seventeenth century continues to shape both hands-on practice and popular anglophone ways of imagining and describing what farming should be and do. She is also a contributing editor and a member of the Advisory Board for The Pulter Project, an edition of seventeenth-century poet Hester Pulter's work, which has won the 2020 MLA Prize for Collaborative, Bibliographical, or Archival Scholarship.  This is a short video about the project.

View the book at the University of Pennsylvania Press