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University of Illinois Department of History

Faculty and Staff

Carol  Symes

Curriculumn Vitae

Employment:

Assistant Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,     2002 -
Full-time Faculty Member (History and Drama), Bennington College, Bennington, VT, 1998-2002
Tutor in History and Literature, Harvard University, 1996-1998
Tutor in History, Harvard University, 1993-1996
Curator of Medieval Deeds and Charters, Harvard Law School Library, 1992-1995
Special Collections Cataloguer, Baker Library, Harvard Business School, 1990-1991
Records Officer, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, 1989-1990
Assistant to the Librarian, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, 1987-1988

Education:

Ph.D	1999	Harvard University, History
A.M	1991	Harvard University, History
M.Litt.	1991	Oxford University, History
B.A.	1988	Yale College, Humanities (cum laude, with Distinction in the Major)

Ph.D Dissertation	A Medieval Stage:  Theatre and the Culture of Performance in Thirteenth-Century Arras
		Advisor:	Thomas N. Bisson, Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History
		Committee:	Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Profeesor of Medieval History
			Eckehard Simon, Turner Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures

M.Litt. Thesis	Aspects of Marriage and Sexuality in the Miracle Literature of Twelfth-Century England
		Advisor:	Henry Mayr-Harting, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History
		Tutor:	Paul R. Hyams (then fellow of Pembroke College, now of Cornell University)
		Examining Committee:	Prof. James Campbell (for Oxford University)
			Prof. Christopher Brooke (for Cambridge University)

Honors and Prizes

Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, Medieval Academy of America, 2004
	Awarded annually to a scholar resident in North America for a first essay published in any journal, language, or area of medieval studies in a given year, and judged to be of outstanding quality.
Martin Stevens Award, Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, 2003
	Awarded annually to the best essay in the field to be published in a given year.
University of Illinois, “Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students,” 2002-2005
Runner-Up, Levenson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Harvard, 1996
Certificates of Distinction in Teaching at Harvard University, 1994-1996
American Library Association Award for Excellence (1994) and Leab Book Award for 1995

Fellowship Awards

Mellon Faculty Fellowship (research grant and semester’s leave):  Spring, 2004
Heckman Fellowship, Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, St. John’s University:  Summer, 2000
Lurcy Fellowship for Research and Travel in France, 1996-1997
Harvard University Fellowship, 1990-1995
Overseas Research Student Award, 1989-1990 (Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the United Kingdom)
Oxford University Scholarship, 1988-1990

Book Manuscript

A Medieval Theatre:  Plays and Public Life in Thirteenth-Century Arras – to be be submitted in the fall of 2005.

Publications

“The Lordship of Jongleurs,” in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350:   Essays in Honor of Thomas N. Bisson, ed. Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto; pp. 231-246. Aldershot, England:  Ashgate, 2005.

 “Theatre,” in Arts and Humanities through the Eras (Volume V):  Medieval Europe (814-1450), ed. Kristen M. Figg and John Block Friedman, pp. 377-417.   Farmington Hills, MI:  Thomson Gale, 2004.

“The Boy and the Blind Man:  A Medieval Play Script and Its Editors,” in The Book Unbound:  New Directions in Editing and Reading Medieval Books and Texts, ed. Siân Echard and Stephen B. Partridge, pp. 105-143.   Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2004.

“A Few Odd Visits:   Unusual Settings of the Visitatio sepulchri,” in Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance.  Essays in Honour of Andrew Hughes, ed. John Haines and Randall Rosenfeld, pp. 300-322.   Aldershot, England and Brookfield, Vermont:  Ashgate, 2004.  

 “The Performance and Preservation of Medieval Latin Comedy.”  European Medieval Drama 7 (2003):  29-50.

“The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays:  Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theatre.” Speculum:  A Journal of Medieval Studies 77 (2002):  778-831. winner of the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prizee of the Medieval Academy of America  (2004), and the Martin Stevens Award of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (2003)

History in Deed: Medieval Society and the Law in England, 1100-1600.  Catalogue of an Exhibition of Deeds and Charters from the Harvard Law School Library; with an Introduction by Charles Donahue, Jr.Cambridge, Massachusetts:  President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1993.winner of the 1994 American Library Association Award for Excellence and the ALA’s Leab Book Award for 1995

“Director’s Report on Pageants from the Towneley Cycle Performed at Harvard University, 25-26 April 1996.”              
Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (Medieval Supplement) 36 (1997):  196-199.

with Adam J. Kosto, Michael McCormick, et al.  “A New Work by Wyclif?,” in The Marks in the Fields:  Essays on the Uses of Manuscripts, ed. Rodney G. Dennis, pp. 30-37.  Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Houghton Library (Harvard University Press), 1992.

Currently under Consideration

“Out in the Open:  Sightlines, Soundscapes, and the Shaping of a Medieval Public Sphere” –  to be resubmitted to the American Historical Review.

“The Tragedy of the Middle Ages:  Toward a New History of Transmission and Reception,” in Points of Contact: Greek Tragedy in the Western Tradition, ed. Ingo Gildenhard and Martin Revermann – book prospectus submitted for press review in October, 2005.

Currently under Contract

“The Manuscript Matrix and the Modern Canon” – chapter commissioned for 21st-Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, [forthcoming in 2006]