Biography

Studying history at Brown University allowed me to see how the stories we tell about our past shape every aspect of how we understand ourselves in the present. Of particular interest to me are narratives on gender and emotion. I have found that scholars of the medieval Norse tend to sort their emotional performances, particularly those related to grief and anger, along gendered lines. This creates a binary narrative, not much different from our current perceptions of “proper” emotional performances, in which men are permitted to aggressively express their anger, but not grieve loss, while women are allowed freedom to grieve openly, but not to express their anger. As a student in the Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic Studies department, I want to challenge our narratives of gendered emotional performance in the medieval Norse world by researching displays of emotion which diverge from the gender binary imposed by current scholarship. I believe that revising the narratives historians construct around the emotional expression of Norse people will help us redefine ourselves as a society in which anyone can grieve and get angry without worrying about being censured or shamed due to their gender.

Previous Education

Brown University History 2024