Anna Taylor

Associate Professor of History

Ph.D., University of Texas, Austin (2006).

Professor Taylor's new work looks at the history of premodern animals from a zoocentric perspective. Her current book project, "Where Are the Wild Things?" explores the histories of various species from interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing on biology, ethology, and archaeology.  Her first book, Epic Lives and Monasticism in the Middle Ages, 800-1050, published by Cambridge University Press in 2013, is the first book to focus on Latin epic verse saints’ lives in their medieval historical contexts 

Research Areas

History of medieval Europe
Animals in the Middle Ages and Ancient World
Hagiography
History of the book
Monsters in the Middle Ages

Publications

Epic Lives and Monasticism in the Middle Ages, 800-1050. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 

“Books, Bones, and Bodies: Hilduin of Saint-Denis and the Relics of Saint Dionysius.” The Ends of the Body: Identity and Community in Medieval Culture, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Jill Ross. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Pp. 25-60. 

“Lives and Afterlives: Medieval Historians and Hagiography.” Religion Compass 7.1 (2013): 1-14.  

“Just like a Mother Bee: Reading and Writing Vitae Metricae around the Year 1000.” Viator 36 (2005): 119- 148.