Emily A. Winkler
Jesus College
Supervisors: Professor Chris Wickham (All Souls College), Dr Laura Ashe (Worcester College)
Thesis title:
Royal responsibility in post-Conquest invasion narratives
Projects
I am currently working on my doctoral thesis, which at its most basic level investigates how Anglo-Norman writers of the twelfth century wrote about the eleventh. Eleventh-century England saw both a short-lived Danish conquest preceded by years of invasion, and an unprecedented Norman conquest of indefinite duration. My thesis asks how and why historians in England (c. 1120 to c. 1150) retold accounts of England’s eleventh-century invasions. What can their accounts of the eleventh-century conquests of England reveal about their attitudes towards kings and kingship, responsibility and explanation? I examine what happened to beliefs about the English past when historians—writing from an early twelfth-century vantage point in different genres—endeavoured to account for the extreme stresses of repeated invasion and conquest. The project’s methods are based on close readings and comparative studies across time and genre. I am investigating the works of William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon and Geffrei Gaimar, comparing them to their sources in order to examine the roots of and reasons for the ways in which they reenvision and design the past.
Research Interests
My broad thematic interests include cultural, intellectual and political history, and medieval approaches to geography, narrative and classical historiography. My masters dissertation (2009) examined how William of Poitiers supported William of Normandy’s claim to the English throne by making explicit and tacit moral connections between the actions of ancient heroes and those of William of Normandy and Harold Godwineson. My other research interests include comparative study of conquest narratives concerning sea voyages and invasions of Britain. In particular, I am interested in how medieval historians envision Caesar’s invasion of Britain in light of subsequent invasions including the Norman conquest of 1066.
Presentations
I have presented my work for the Charles Homer Haskins Society International Conference in Boston (2009), the Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium (2010) and the Leeds International Medieval Congress (2011). At Oxford, I have presented for the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (2009), Faculty of History workshops and graduate conferences (2008, 2009, 2010) and the Medieval Church and Culture Seminar (2009, 2011). I organized a session at the Leeds Congress on royal authority in chronicles in 2011. In summer 2012, I will be participating in a session on twelfth-century narratives and moderating a panel on new developments in Domesday Book studies.
Outreach
I volunteer at both the Museum of the History of Science and the Ashmolean Museum. At the MHS I conduct tours for the public, and at the Ashmolean’s money gallery I moderate coin-handling sessions for the public.