Invisible Gardeners: Intermediaries and the Making of Botanical Knowledge, 1750 to 1850
European History Section, Southern Historical Society, Atlanta, GA
Research
I work on the movement of plants, garden design, and travel writing between France and the Atlantic world from roughly 1750 to 1850. I keep returning to the same problem. The published record credits naturalists and patrons, while the people who actually carried seeds and letters across borders are usually left unnamed. My work tries to put those intermediaries back into the account, and to read Romantic writing about landscape as something that shaped real gardens rather than only describing them.
Current projects
Botanophilia Correspondences during the Revolutionary Era
A database of eighteenth and nineteenth century plant collectors and the letters they exchanged. The project maps who wrote to whom, which species travelled along those routes, and where the intermediaries sit who usually go unnamed in the published record.
Invisible gardeners
A study of the go-betweens in botanical exchange from 1750 to 1850. Ship captains, nursery workers, colonial administrators, and correspondents without titles moved seeds and cuttings that later appeared under a naturalist's name. I presented early findings at the Southern Historical Society in November 2026.
Romanticism and the garden
Growing out of my dissertation on Les jardins exotiques, this strand looks at how Chateaubriand and his contemporaries wrote about landscape, and how those texts shaped what French gardens were built to look like afterward.
Areas
Transatlantic historyRevolutionary Era FranceFrench colonial historyEnvironment and imperialismRomanticismEcocriticismGarden and landscape historyHistory of botany
Publications
- Sanchez-Clapper, Kyra. "Botanophilia Correspondences During the Revolutionary Era." Network in Canadian History and Environment, May 29, 2023. Link
- Sanchez-Clapper, Kyra. Peer reviewer for Journal of Ecohumanism. Five articles, 2022 to present.
- Sanchez Clapper, Kyra. "Reading the Gardens at Vallée Aux Loups." Age of Revolutions, November 29, 2021. Link
Public writing and podcasts
- "Catching up with Kyra Sanchez Clapper." Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene, February 15, 2026. Podcast. Link
- "Kate Brelje interviews Kyra Sanchez Clapper." Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene, May 15, 2024. Podcast. Link
- Sanchez Clapper, Kyra. "Rebranding Political Parties in France." Vistas, May 2022. Link
- Sanchez Clapper, Kyra. "Ecotourism and Nationalism." Vistas, March 2021. Link
Book reviews
- David Macauley and Laura Pustarfi. The Wisdom of Trees: Thinking through Arboreality (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2025), in H-Net Environment, June 2026.
- Clark, Timothy. The Value of Ecocriticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), in Journal of Ecohumanism, forthcoming 2026.
- Hill, Christopher L. Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form (Northwestern University Press, 2020), in World History Encyclopedia, forthcoming 2026.
- Lehner, Ulrich L. The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment (London: Oxford University Press, 2022), in World History Encyclopedia, February 2023.
- Colta Ives. Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence (New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), in H-Net Environment, August 2020.
Recent talks
Literary and Cultural Plant Studies in German Studies Seminar
German Studies Association, Phoenix, AZ
The Plant Collectors Network of Revolutionary Era France
American Society of Environmental History, Kansas City, MO
Visualizing Epistolary Botany: Networks of Knowledge in the Revolutionary Era
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Jacksonville, AL
Romantic Travel Accounts on American Fauna
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Savannah, GA
18th Century Studies Meets 21st Century Community Development
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Greenville, SC
Teaching History in the World Language Classroom
Tennessee World Language Teacher Association, Franklin, TN
Mapping Botanical Exchanges During the Long Eighteenth Century
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Decatur, GA