Bryn’s academic expertise is in the influence of politics, culture, and media on poetry and poetics from the advent of the printing press through the modern period. A lover of archives, Bryn is fascinated by the promise and problems associated with new technologies, primary sources, and the exchange of ideas.

Blending her love of archives and technology, Bryn guest curated an exhibition for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, which was later preserved as an digital exhibition and e-learning tool: Creating Germany’s National Myth. The Nibelungenlied and its Homerian Context. The digital project makes it possible for scholars and students to access commented facsimiles of essential texts related to the reception history of the Nibelungenlied — many of which had not previously been available online.

In her dissertation, “Collecting Tradition: Modernity, Material Culture, and German Poetry Anthologies, 1765-1795,” Bryn applied book and reception history methodologies to examine the rise of the anthology as we know it in the 18th century and explored its use as a testing ground for innovations in poetics as well as a litmus test for cultural and literary change.

Bryn also organized the Yale Working Group in Book History, a well-attended lecture and discussion series supported by the Beinecke Library.