About
Emma Olson is a medievalist whose research focuses on sound, performance, and the peasantry in 14th-15th century Western Europe. Her forthcoming article in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (May, 2023), "Margery Kempe as Mankind: An Early Textual Witness to East Anglian Performance Culture," explores the influence of East Anglian morality plays on The Book of Margery Kempe and its relevance to Kempe's readers, the Carthusians of Mount Grace Priory. An earlier version of this paper was awarded Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Best Undergraduate Student Research in 2020. In her MA at Yale, Emma worked on the political and social dimensions of sound in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Some of her other research interests include audition and aurality in Latin and Middle English texts, acoustics as spatial and temporal markers, reading and documentary practices, the connection between musical instruments and the human body (particularly bagpipes), and the role of sound in community formation.
