Dissertation
Old English Ecologies: Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and Culture (Western Michigan University, 2013).
Abstract: Conventionally, scholars have viewed representations of the natural world in Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature as peripheral, static, or largely symbolic: a “backdrop” before which the events of human and divine history unfold. In “Old English Ecologies,” I apply the relatively new critical perspectives of ecocriticism and placebased study to the Anglo-Saxon canon to reveal the depth and changeability in these literary landscapes. Overall, this interdisciplinary study of Anglo-Saxon texts brings together literary and environmental sources and modes of inquiry to explore the place of humans (and non-humans) within the natural environments of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the ways in which natural cycles and processes are reflected in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture. Looking to Old English scriptural, hagiographical, epic, gnomic, and elegiac poetry, as well as homilies, prayers, and philosophical and didactic works, I locate imagined or figurative landscapes in these texts. Employing ecocritical theory, I find intersections between these figurative spaces—the mead-hall, the conventional “center” of human society in the Anglo-Saxon world, as well as the lonely worlds of exile (water, wood, and wilderness), and the grave, the earthly body’s final “home”—and their actual counterparts. Ultimately, the project confronts the conventional reading of the Anglo-Saxon worldview of earth’s impending and inevitable decay with evidence that cyclical and seasonal views of time pervade the works of the period. By juxtaposing my ecological readings with archaeological reports and landscape histories, I am able to expose the paradoxes of finding one’s literary, actual, and ecological place(s) in an Anglo-Saxon landscape that is always in flux, yet trapped in stasis.
Available via WMU Scholarworks.
Old English Ecologies: Environmental Readings of Anglo-Saxon Texts and Culture (Western Michigan University, 2013).
Abstract: Conventionally, scholars have viewed representations of the natural world in Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature as peripheral, static, or largely symbolic: a “backdrop” before which the events of human and divine history unfold. In “Old English Ecologies,” I apply the relatively new critical perspectives of ecocriticism and placebased study to the Anglo-Saxon canon to reveal the depth and changeability in these literary landscapes. Overall, this interdisciplinary study of Anglo-Saxon texts brings together literary and environmental sources and modes of inquiry to explore the place of humans (and non-humans) within the natural environments of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as the ways in which natural cycles and processes are reflected in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture. Looking to Old English scriptural, hagiographical, epic, gnomic, and elegiac poetry, as well as homilies, prayers, and philosophical and didactic works, I locate imagined or figurative landscapes in these texts. Employing ecocritical theory, I find intersections between these figurative spaces—the mead-hall, the conventional “center” of human society in the Anglo-Saxon world, as well as the lonely worlds of exile (water, wood, and wilderness), and the grave, the earthly body’s final “home”—and their actual counterparts. Ultimately, the project confronts the conventional reading of the Anglo-Saxon worldview of earth’s impending and inevitable decay with evidence that cyclical and seasonal views of time pervade the works of the period. By juxtaposing my ecological readings with archaeological reports and landscape histories, I am able to expose the paradoxes of finding one’s literary, actual, and ecological place(s) in an Anglo-Saxon landscape that is always in flux, yet trapped in stasis.
Available via WMU Scholarworks.
International Conference Presentations
“Paths Without End: Exile and Movement and Immobility in Anglo-Saxon Poetry”
— Leeds International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 2017
“Teaching the Edda and Sagas in the Undergraduate Classroom: Strategies and Approaches” (roundtable; presenter and organizer) — International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2017
“The Dead Speak: The ‘Soul and Body’ Tradition in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Literatures”
— International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2014
“Waste Not, Want Not: Misuse and Disuse of Land and Labor in Old Norse Law and Literature”
— International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2011
“Elegy, Environment, Ecology: a Green Reading of Exile in Anglo-Saxon Poetry”
—International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2009
“Publish and Perish: Declaring Murder in Icelandic Sagas”
— International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2007
“The Memory of Trees in Anglo-Saxon Poetry”
— University of Leeds International Medieval Congress, Leeds (UK), July 2006
“‘Still Combatants’ of Ragnarök in Anglo-Scandinavian Stone Sculpture”
—International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2006
“The Crux Gemmata and Shifting Significances of the Cross in Insular Art”
—University of Glasgow “Visions and Visionary” Conference Workshop, Glasgow (UK), Spring 2004
Presider for session “Old English Lexis and Alliteration”
-- International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2014
Presider for session “The Junius Manuscript and Its Poems”
— International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2010
National Conferences
“American Norse: Frank Norris’s Adaptations of the Icelandic Grettis Saga”
— Pop Culture Association / American Culture Association, April 2017
“Houses of Earth and Bone: The Homely Grave in Anglo-Saxon Literature”
— Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, October 2014
“Wilderness, waste, westen: Into the Wild with Guthlac”
— 2013 Anglo-Saxon Studies Graduate Colloquium, New York University, April 2013
“King Arthur the Tyrant and the Scottish Call for Freedom”
— National Conference for Undergraduate Research, Salt Lake City (UT), Spring 2003
State / Regional Conferences
“Natural Places and Digital Spaces: Teaching Environmental Writing with Blogging and Digital Storytelling”
— Co-presenter with Christina Triezenberg, Michigan Academy Conference, Hope College (MI), March 2013
“Advocating for Mother Earth: Uniting 21st Century Technologies, Local Resources, Art, and Activism to Explore Our Place in Nature”
— Co-presenter with Christina Triezenberg, Michigan Academy Conference, Saginaw Valley State University, March 2011
“Grettir’s Last Stand and the Icelandic Frontier: Frank Norris’s Retelling of the 13th century Grettis Saga”
— Michigan Academy Conference, Alma College, March 2009
“Theorizing and Responding to Plagiarism in the Writing Center”
— Co-presenter with Kim Ballard, Director of WMU Writing Center, Michigan Writing Centers Association Ideas Exchange in Muskegon (MI), October 2007