Updated on 2025/01/29

Information

 

写真a

 
BROOKS ELLIOTT BRITTON
 
Organization
Faculty of Languages and Cultures Department of Multicultural Society Associate Professor
Graduate School of Economics Department of Business and Technology Management(Concurrent)
Title
Associate Professor
Contact information
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Degree

  • Bachelor of Arts in English (BA), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2005)

  • Master of Arts in Medieval British Studies (MA), Cardiff University (2007)

  • Master of Studies in English (MSt), The University of Oxford (2011)

  • Doctor of Philosophy in English (DPhil), The University of Oxford (2017)

Research History

  • 2018–2021: Project Assistant Professor, University of Tokyo 2020–2021: Lecturer, Keio University 2019–2020: Lecturer, Rikkyo University 2015–2018: Lecturer, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 2012–2015: Part-time Tutor in Medieval English Language and Literature, various Colleges of Oxford University (Wadham College, Worcester College, Exeter College, Mansfield College, Queen's College, and Regent's Park College)

Research Interests・Research Keywords

  • Research theme:Early Medieval Soundscapes

    Keyword:Soundscape, Environmental Humanities, Old English Literature, Anglo-Latin Literature, Saint's Lives

    Research period: 2019.4 - 2022.3

Papers

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Books

  • Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England

    Britton Elliott Brooks Karen Louise Jolly Debby Banham Jane Hawkes Carol Neuman de Vegvar Jonathan Wilcox Caitlin Green John Hines John Niles Kazutomo Karasawa Michael W. Scott( Role: Edit)

    Boydell and Brewer, UK  2022.1 

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    Language:English   Book type:Scholarly book

    Other Link: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781800105089/global-perspectives-on-early-medieval-england/

  • Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac

    ( Role: Sole author)

    2019.9 

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    Language:English   Book type:Scholarly book

    Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac explores the relationship between the natural world (Creation) and humanity through the early English saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their Anglo-Latin and Old English Lives. It argues that this relationship is best understood through received theological exegesis concerning Creation’s present state in the fallen world. The exegesis has its foundation in St Augustine’s interpretations of the Genesis narrative, though it enters the textual tradition of the Lives via an adapted portion from Augustine in Bede’s verse Life of Saint Cuthbert. Both Augustine and Bede argue, with slight differences, the following: that fallen Creation often functions to urge humanity, the saints included, towards greater holiness; that the Fall produced a relational breach between humanity and Creation (whether actual or ontological); and that the effects of the Fall can be temporarily removed by restoring a portion of Creation into its pre-fallen state by means of sanctity. The end result is a re-centering of the role of the physical world in early medieval literature, which lays the groundwork for a more nuanced engagement with pre-modern notions of the non-human world.

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787445604

    Other Link: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843845300/restoring-creation-the-natural-world-in-the-anglo-saxon-saints-lives-of-cuthbert-and-guthlac/

  • World Wakers: Beginnings

    Britton Elliott Brooks( Role: Sole author)

    United States and International  2022.10 

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    Language:English   Book type:General book, introductory book for general audience

Presentations

  • Knowing Ocean(s:) Saturated Textualities along the North Sea International conference

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    International Medieval Congress  2024.7 

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    Event date: 2024.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (general)  

    Country:United Kingdom  

  • The Deep: Grund and Seafloor in Old English Literature

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    The 40th Western Branch Meeting of the Japanese Society of Medieval English Language and Literature  2024.6 

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    Event date: 2024.6

    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (general)  

    Venue:Hiroshima Shudo University   Country:Japan  

    In this paper I argued that the deep sea and seafloor, often referred to in Old English with the noun grund, was predominantly constructed in literature as a constantly shifting assemblage of physical interactions (however mediated and conceptual) and metaphorical utilisations, and mainly employed to denote two specific things: 1. A solid foundational surface, sometimes the very foundation of all Creation, and other times, the actual physical seafloor; 2. As an environment (the Deep sea), an aqueous volumetric space, secret and unknowable to all but God and the creatures ordained to live there (from whales to monsters), as well as heroes like Beowulf (echoing Christ) who do battle there. In this way, the deep sea and seafloor are gathered together in a way similar to our modern English noun: the Deep. The paper explored this argument in a number of texts, including Genesis A and The Seafarer (grund as foundation), The Order of the World, Old English Riddle 38, and the Metrical Psalms (grund as environment), and Beowulf (grund and humanity).

  • Knowing Oceans: Early Medieval Seas Invited International conference

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England  2024.4 

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    Event date: 2024.4

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Country:Japan  

  • Knowing Ocean(s): Borders and Boundaries, from Surface to Seafloor International conference

    Brooks, Britton Elliott

    International Medieval Congress, Leeds University  2022.7 

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    Event date: 2022.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (general)  

    Country:United Kingdom  

  • 'Sonic Materialities: Aqueous Soundscapes in Anglo-Saxon Literature' International conference

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    International Medieval Congress, Leeds University  2019.7 

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    Event date: 2019.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Country:United Kingdom  

  • The Deep: Grund and Seafloor in Old English Literature

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    Japan Society for Medieval English Studies West Branch  2024.6 

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    Event date: 2024.6

    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (general)  

    Country:Japan  

  • Knowing Oceans: Tides, Shallows, and Literature

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    Japan Society for Medieval English Studies  2023.12 

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    Event date: 2023.12

    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (general)  

    Country:Japan  

  • Sounding the World: Biophony and Geophony in Old English and Old Norse literature.

    1. Britton Elliott Brooks

    The English Literary Society of Japan  2022.5 

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    Event date: 2022.5

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Country:Japan  

  • ‘Submerged: Thinking through the Sea in Early English Literature’.

    2021.5 

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    Event date: 2021.5

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Waseda University (Online)   Country:Japan  

  • ‘Material Aurality: Text, Image, and Stone in early Medieval England’

    2020.12 

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    Event date: 2020.12

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Online.   Country:Japan  

  • 'The Earth Cries Out: Inanimate Aurality in Anglo-Saxon Literature'

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    The Japan Society for Medieval English Studies  2019.12 

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    Event date: 2019.11 - 2019.12

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Country:Japan  

  • ‘Anglo-Saxon Soundscapes: The Song of the Sea’

    2018.12 

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    Event date: 2018.12

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Aichi University of Education   Country:Japan  

  • ‘Soundscapes in the Vitae of St Guthlac’ International conference

    2018.7 

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    Event date: 2018.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Leeds University   Country:United Kingdom  

  • ‘Relationship Over Dialectic: Interdependent Voices in the prose Old English Boethius’ International conference

    2017.11 

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    Event date: 2017.11

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Chaminade University of Honolulu   Country:United States  

  • ‘Eco-Criticism and the Natural World: Native Soundscapes in Felix’s Vita sancti Guthlaci’ International conference

    2016.10 

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    Event date: 2016.10

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:University of Colorado at Boulder   Country:United States  

  • ‘Cuthbert as Lamp: Bede’s Transformation of Cuthbert in his Metrical Vita sancti Cuthberti’ International conference

    2015.7 

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    Event date: 2015.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Leeds University   Country:United Kingdom  

  • ‘The Vernacular Fenland: the Literal Landscape of the Anonymous Old English Prose Life of Saint Guthlac’ International conference

    2015.5 

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    Event date: 2015.5

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Country:United States  

  • ‘The Literal Landscape: Felix’s use of authorizing allusion and lexical echo in his construction of the English Fenlands in his Vita Sancti Guthlac’ International conference

    2014.4 

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    Event date: 2014.4 - 2021.4

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:University of London   Country:United Kingdom  

  • ‘The Involution of Theodicy in the Anonymous Vita sancti Cuthberti: Obedience, Reorientation, and Pilgrimage’ International conference

    2014.3 

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    Event date: 2014.3

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich   Country:Germany  

  • ‘The Righteousness of Pleasure: The Path to Pleasure in Creation in the Legends of Saint Guthlac’ International conference

    2013.7 

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    Event date: 2013.7

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:Leeds University   Country:United Kingdom  

  • ‘A Chorus of Voices: Intimacy, Interdependence, and Interiority in the Voices of the Old English Boethius and Old English Soliloquies’ International conference

    2013.3 

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    Event date: 2013.3

    Language:English   Presentation type:Public lecture, seminar, tutorial, course, or other speech  

    Venue:University of Bern   Country:Switzerland  

  • Knowing Oceans: Early Medieval Seas Invited International conference

    Britton Elliott Brooks

    International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME) Virtual Seminar  2024.5 

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    Language:English   Presentation type:Oral presentation (invited, special)  

    Venue:Online  

    The early medieval world of the British and Irish archipelago was, in many ways, an aqueous one, where seas, oceans, lakes, and rivers provided crucial avenues for the movement of people, goods, and ideas. They also provided resources, including food items, like salmon and eels, as well as raw materials, for example whelks for dye and seaweed for fertiliser. With the increasingly vibrant scholarship of the environmental humanities, and the blue humanities in particular, the role of these waters has gained critical attention. Yet much of this work is predominantly anthropocentric, and most often archaeological and historical. There is a slight scholarly gap in researching literary responses to the medieval seas, particularly in connection with recent advances in fields like environmental history and historical climatology, and specifically ones that shift the critical gaze to the ocean, its wild material self.

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MISC

Professional Memberships

  • The Japan Society for Medieval English Studies (JSMES)

  • The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)

  • Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Society (PAMLA)

  • The English Literary Society of Japan

Committee Memberships

  • The Japan Society for Medieval English Studies   Editorial Committee Member and Research Grant Committee Member   Domestic

    2019.4 - 2023.4   

Academic Activities

  • The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan

    2022.4 - 2024.6

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    Type:Academic society, research group, etc. 

  • Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature

    2019.4 - 2023.4

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    Type:Academic society, research group, etc. 

Research Projects

  • Knowing Oceans: The Early Medieval English North Sea International coauthorship

    2024.4 - 2029.3

    JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C): 24K03704 

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    Authorship:Principal investigator 

    Knowing Oceans: The Early Medieval English North Sea (hereafter KO North Sea) aims to investigate human interaction with the North Sea in the British Archipelago throughout the early Medieval period (c. 500–1200), and reveal how such interactions were conceptualized and utilized in literary productions. To achieve this goal, the project will bring together approaches from a number of fields, including literary studies, linguistics, archaeology, medieval studies, ecocriticism, environmental history, and historical climatology. To engage with such a wide variety of data, KO North Sea will utilize tools from the digital humanities, particularly GIS databases and mapping, to better analyze the interdependent relationship between early medieval English peoples and their aqueous environment.

  • Knowing Oceans: The Early Medieval English North Sea

    Grant number:24K03704  2024 - 2029

    Japan Society for the Promotion of Science  Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research  Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

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    Authorship:Principal investigator  Grant type:Scientific research funding

  • Early Medieval Soundscapes International coauthorship

    2019.4 - 2022.4

    JSPS Kahkeni Grant: 19K13100 

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    Authorship:Principal investigator 

    Early Medieval Soundscapes will bring together approaches from a variety of fields, from both the sciences and the humanities. This project seeks to reconstruct perceptions of aural phenomena, and will theorise early medieval soundscapes by considering aural events in a range of artistic productions, including literature, visual representation in manuscripts, and material culture, in direct connection with the physical, acoustic, and built environments. I am employing techniques and approaches from a variety of fields, including Literary Analysis, Philosophy, Linguistics, Sound Studies, Archaeoacoustics, as well as Deep Mapping and other geospatial digital techniques. This interdisciplinary, multilingual, and multicultural approach will provide a novel and necessary analysis of early medieval perceptions of the non-human world.

  • Early Medieval Soundscapes

    Grant number:02030  2019 - 2023

    Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research  Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists(A)or(B)

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    Authorship:Principal investigator  Grant type:Scientific research funding

Educational Activities

  • Doctor of Philosophy in English (DPhil), 2017.
    University of Oxford• Oxford, England.
    Thesis: ‘The Restoration of Creation in the early Anglo-Saxon Vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac’.
    Supervisor: Dr Francis Leneghan.
    Viva Examiners: Prof. Andy Orchard and Prof. Daniel Anlezark.

    Master of Studies in English (MSt), 2011.
    University of Oxford• Oxford, England.
    Dissertation: ‘The Playful Construction of Space and Place in Middle English Narratives: The Locus Amoenus, The Forested Wilderness, and the Otherworld in Sir Orfeo’.

    Master of Arts in Medieval British Studies (MA), 2007.
    Cardiff University• Cardiff, Wales.
    Dissertation: ‘Moses as Holy Warrior: The Characterization of Moses in the Old English Exodus’.

    Bachelor of Arts in English (BA), 2005.
    University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa • Honolulu, Hawai‘i.