Over time, my research has returned to an interest I had developed in my undergraduate studies at Cornell: the Celtic peoples of the British Isles. Medieval texts and modern archaeology allow us to look at the meeting of Scandinavian migrants to the British Isles from the eighth century onward, and the ways in which this migration affected the cultures of places like the Orkneys, Hebrides, Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland.
In Lyric, Meaning and Audience, I have sought to compare the lyric song traditions of the British Isles and Scandinavia, from the early medieval period to the present. In one of the chapters of my edited volume Sanctity in the North, I looked at the role of Irish and English saints in the conversion of continental Scandinavia. I am beginning work on a project now that looks at pilgrimage traditions in the two areas and more broadly in Europe.
I teach a course on Celtic-Scandinavian Relations in the Viking Age, and I have team- taught a course with Jim Leary on Irish and Irish-American folklore.
Additional articles:
"Sts Sunniva and Henrik: Scandinavian Martyr Saints in their Hagiographic and National Contexts. In Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia. Ed. Thomas A. DuBois. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Pp. 65-99.
"The Linguistics and Stylistics of Orality" In Medieval Oral LIterature. Ed. Karl Reichl. Berlin: DeGruyter, 2012. Pp. 203-224. |
