Rachel Gross is an environmental, cultural, and public historian specializing in the history of the modern U.S. Her research and teaching interests center on business, consumer culture, and gender, and she is especially interested in what seemingly ordinary consumer goods tell us about identity and power. She teaches courses on capitalism, commodities, women and gender, and public history.
Dr. Gross is currently at work on a book, Selling Nature: The Outdoor Industry in American History. The project explores the history of outdoor clothing and gear in the United States and asks why Americans go shopping on their way to the wilderness. The dissertation on which her manuscript is based won the Herman E. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History from the Business History Conference in 2018. The Smithsonian Institution, the Lemelson Center, the Hagley Museum and Library, and the Mellon Foundation have supported her work. Her public history work includes a museum exhibit on “Outdoor Gear Stories From the Treasure State” and lectures at historical societies and museums.
From 2017-2019, Dr. Gross was a Teaching, Research, and Mentoring Postdoctoral Fellow at the Davidson Honors College of the University of Montana and in 2019 she was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center.
