SCAS Announces Fellows of the Academic Year 2026-27 (2)

During her fellowship at SCAS, Linda Andersson Burnett will complete the book manuscript Savage Explorations: Carl Linnaeus and Eighteenth-Century Primitivism. In this book she explores the influence of Linnaeus’s exploration of “savagery” and “northern primitivism” during the Enlightenment. She locates Linnaean natural history at the heart of eighteenth-century philosophical, scientific and economic investigations into northern Scandinavia and northern Britain. The central question the book answers is: why did these two areas undergo a dramatic transformation from being regarded as barren and dangerous spaces to being considered enticing realms worthy of exploring, narrating and exploiting? Andersson Burnett argues that the work of Linnaeus and Linnaean-inspired explorations of savagery and “northern primitivism” played a crucial role in that transformation. While primitivism and encounters with “noble savages” were largely associated with the non-European world, the fascination with the European north was in observing what was regarded as Europe’s very own “savage” territories and peoples.

Linda Andersson Burnett will be a SCAS Fellow during the academic year 2026–27.

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