Avonlea Bowthorpe
Ph.D. Student
advisor:
Paul Mapp
Email:
[[acbowthorpe]]
Current Research:
Atlantic World, Gender and Sexuality, Labor and Unfreedom
Bio
A lifelong resident of northwest Washington State, Avonlea graduated in 2021 from Western Washington University with a BA in History. At WWU, she distinguished herself as a dedicated student of the past and was inspired by the work of historians who explore agency and archival silences in their scholarship. She completed two major research projects within that realm. The first studied the rhetoric used during piracy trials in British admiralty courts from 1710-30, arguing that accused pirates utilized a language of labor and morality to defend themselves at the bar. The second, her senior thesis, reframed the Warming Pan Scandal of 1688 as a story about gendered power and knowledge, with Judith Wilks, Mary of Modena's midwife, at the center. Both projects received high praise, and Avonlea was given the faculty-bestowed honor of being WWU's 2021 Outstanding Graduate in History.After a gap year, during which she worked in public history with the National Park Service, Avonlea will spend the next year at William & Mary traveling farther into the world of the early modern Atlantic, using systems of labor as a framework for understanding the lives of people on the margins of British Atlantic society. She is also an editorial apprentice at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.
