Sarah LaVoy-Brunette and Jordan Chauncy, Ph.D. candidates in Medieval Studies, have published a co-authored article, "Settler Fantasies and Queer Disruptions: A Nonbinary Reading of Gerald’s Wolves," in Medieval Ecocriticisms 4 (2024), a special issue on "Trans Natures” edited by Aylin Malcolm and Nat Rivkin. Congratulations to Sarah and Jordan!
Abstract
This article offers a nonbinary reading of Gerald of Wales’ twelfth-century Topographia Hibernica (Topography of Ireland) to examine the ways in which the text’s Ossory wolf episode both imposes and undermines its own imposed colonial taxonomies. Through a relational analysis that brings together Indigenous studies and trans theory, this article makes legible the Ossory wolves’ queer disruptions and understands such disruptions as forms of Irish resistance and survivance to the colonizing forces of the Anglo-Normans. Ultimately, we argue for a nonbinary reading of the Topographia that resists taxonomy–even hybridity–and insists on fluidity and plurality.
