We are delighted to announce that Zoe Appleby, Rebekkah Hart, Cecily Hughes, and Madeline Newquist defended their dissertation prospectuses with flying colors!  Materiality and environment clearly rule the day here. Zoe’s dissertation is provisionally titled “Earth, Water, Gems, and Lava: Eco-Materiality and Environmental Agency in the Medieval Mediterranean,” while Rebekkah’s picks up the material semiotics thread with “The Kiss of Peace: Materialities and Afterlives of Liturgical Paxes in Late Medieval England (ca. 1250-1550).” Environment as a framework will be foregrounded in Cecily’s dissertation, “Structuring the World: Micro-architecture, Environment, and Religion in Medieval Scandinavian Art, 1150–1350,” as well as in Maddie’s,  “Awe and Exploitation: An Eco-critical Approach to Imperial Roman Art.” Congratulations to the awesome foursome!