Tiffany’s interest in Scandinavia sprung from a course on pre-Christian religions at Manhattanville College, where she completed her BA in World Religions with a double minor in Philosophy and History.
During her undergraduate studies, she focused on interfaith dialogue, both in studies and in practice. Her interest in historical religious conflict led her to pursue an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) in the History of Christianity at the Divinity School at Yale University. Her studies in Roman Religion and Late Antique and early medieval Christianity at Yale sparked an interest in conversion narratives–first south and then north of the Limes–and the depiction of the Other (i.e. the previous religion of the converted peoples) in newly Christianized societies, most notably in Scandinavia. In 2012 she was awarded a Baden-Württemberg Stipendium to study medieval Scandinavian religion, language, and literature at Eberhardt-Karls Universität Tübingen in Germany. After completing her MAR in 2013 she spent a year in Winnipeg, Canada studying Modern Icelandic and thereafter embarked on an MLitt in Viking and Medieval Studies at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her thesis, “From Temple to Cave, from Demon to Troll: The Transmission of a Chapter of Gregory’s Dialogues into Old Icelandic Literature” evaluated the reoccurring adaptation of a narrative from fifth-century Egypt, which made its way into the Late Antique Italian states, and finally to twelfth-century Iceland. Her academic interests include first and foremost the translation and adaptation of religious literature in medieval Iceland (with special ardor for saints’ lives), but also, as of late, realism in the nineteenth-century novels of Jón Thoroddsen and Torfhildur Hólm Þorsteinsdóttir. She teaches Modern Icelandic for the Department of Scandinavian.
Tiffany’s dissertation research focuses on the ecocritical evaluation of medieval Icelandic religious texts. During the academic year of 2019-20, she is based in Reykjavík, Iceland as a Fulbright grantee and Leifur Eiríksson Foundation fellowship recipient.
