History Minor Lillian Taylor has won the Director's Award in recognition of the work she presented at the David C. Frederick Honors College’s Research Symposium. The Director’s Award is given to a student who scored highly in the judging and whose work takes an interdisciplinary approach and is presented in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. Lilly presented an overview of her thesis, titled “Natural and Unnatural Threats: Piracy, Knowledge Production, and the Environmental Imagination in the British Atlantic”. Lilly worked on her thesis under the guidance of Prof. Molly Warsh.
Lilly’s project considers how British ideas about piracy reflected the environmental challenges of the late sixteenth century through the seventeenth century. She discusses how interpretations of climate and environmental change influenced how New England colonists justified their support, and later persecution, of British pirates. Additionally, she places this research in conversation with the history of science to suggest that shifting modes of producing environmental knowledge during the seventeenth century shaped whether pirates surfaced in the environmental imagination as threats or as assets.
Lilly will begin a PhD program in History at the College of William & Mary beginning in Fall 2025. Congratulations, Lilly!
