Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / My dissertation, “Multispecies Communities: An Early Medieval Environmental History of Britain and Ireland c. 600 to 1000 CE,” investigates invertebrates, plants, and non-humans as multispecies
communities, and my study reveals a way to understand how early medieval people understood and lived with their environments through their ecological material surroundings. This period witnessed
the economic and cultural shifts in post-Roman, northwestern Europe in Britain and Ireland, which resulted in the emergence of new types of rural settlements, towns, “productive sites,” and monastic
communities, all of which created a new ecological footprint. Our textual sources from this period are limited, and very few describe what settlements and houses during this shift looked like, so instead, we must rely on archaeological excavation to understand them. I work within the natureculture framework as formulated by ecofeminist Donna Haraway. Natureculture is defined as the entangling of nature and culture, something that happens when human and non-human agents move across species lines and live under and share the same ecological pressures. My dissertation asks how medieval people conceptualized themselves through bodily and household interactions when their day-to-day lives overlapped with invertebrates. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_110046 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Brody, Rachel I. |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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