When Eve Delved: Gender, Nature, and Labor in the 15th Century, examines texts such as the animal fables of Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe's Book, and Cycle Plays. Focused on the 15th century when the unseasonably warm climatological era known as the Medieval Warm Period ended and bleak winters and torrential rains were occurring with increasing frequency, this project studies how literary images of women's agricultural labor transformed with the changing climate. It suggests that the imagery and narrative of women's labor was an important site around which medieval and early modern writers negotiated their anxiety about living in and alongside a natural world grown colder and seemingly more hostile. A chapter from this project, “Something Rotten: Retting, Slow Violence, and Imprudent Ecology in Henryson’s Preaching of the Swallow” is forthcoming in Studies in the Age of Chaucer (2027).

Student researchers and Whitman

Joao’s webpage