CONTACT INFORMATION:
Assistant Professor
Department of History
446K Gregory Hall
University of Illinois
309 Gregory
Urbana, IL 61801-3676 USA
 

Office Telephone:	(217) 233-9897
Office Fax:	(217) 333-2379
Active email:	symes@uiuc.edu
Relevant Webpage:	http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4720
Relevant Webpage:	http://www.history.uiuc.edu/

SCHOLARLY INTERESTS:
Current area(s) of research:
medievalism and the popular perception/reception of the Middle Ages before, during, and after World War I; the history of theatre; pre-modern communication technologies; comparative historiography
 

Selected publications, recent and forthcoming:
A Common Stage:  Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras  (Ithaca and London:  Cornell University Press, 2007).

“Prescription, Proscription, Transcription, Improvisation: Re-Assessing the Written and Unwritten Evidence for Pre-Modern Performance Practice,” in Scripted Orality, ed. Domenico Pietropaolo (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2008), forthcoming.

“Manuscript Matrix, Modern Canon,” in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2007), 7-22. 

“The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays:  Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theater,”  Speculum 77 (2002): 778-831. 
 

WUN-IDENTIFIED RESEARCH COLLABORATION THEMES:
Multilingualism in the Middle Ages:
My first book deals with communication and cultural contacts in northern Europe, specifically the indeterminate region of Picardy and its Franco-Flemish neighbors. Since Arras is regularly credited as a community responsible for the invention of a "literary" French, I dissect these (modern) claims on medieval language and culture. I have also contributed to the conference on this topic in 2006, hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
 
History of the Medieval Book;
I have published extensively on the manuscript transmission of performance practice, drawing on models developed by scholars working on Homeric epic, Greek and Roman drama, pre-modern music, and other forms of orality and aurality.

Medieval Chronicle Studies:
I am extremely interested in the historiography of the Middle Ages, and plan to work more extensively on the connections between history and prophecy in this era, and in antiquity. 

OTHER POSSIBLE THEMES TO BE CONSIDERED:
performance as a category of analysis

Ph.D.s UNDER SUPERVISION:

Grace Chan, "The papacy and apostolic poverty in the 13th and 14th centuries"

Trisha Olson, "Late-medieval criminal justice and punishment"

Interest in possible exchange of PhD students with WUN partner institutions:

definite:  see below

Past or current WUN graduate exchange students you have sponsored (please give their name, institution, and title of their research or dissertation project):

I am currently working with a visiting PhD student from the University of Manchester, Kathryn Green, on the Westmisnter Chronicle and the politics of performance/performance of politics in late 14th-century England.

STAFF EXCHANGES / ONLINE RESOURCE CREATION / VIDEOCONFERENCING

(i).  Interest in staff exchanges with WUN partner institutions:

I am hoping to be able to spend some time at York University this spring, and would be very interested in pursuing an exchange with faculty there.  Close ties between UIUC and York already exist. 

GRADUATE TAUGHT COURSES (e.g. MASTERS, etc.)

History of Historiography
Problems in Medieval History
Individual Research and Writing Projects

Medieval studies courses taught at present:

Medieval England
Medieval Europe
Medieval Civilization
Medieval into Modern (the Later Middle Ages)
A Muse of Fire:  Shakespeare's History Plays

Courses that you would like to see developed:

Theatre and Society
The History of Medievalism