The History Department is excited to announce that the Burkhardt Lecture will be given by Dr. Carol Symes.  The lecture is presented as part of the department's annual Student History Conference, which will be held February 26, 2010, at the L.A. Pittenger Student Center. 

 

Dr. Symes is the Helen Corley Petit Scholar in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois.  She received her doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1999 and for several years taught European history and drama at Bennington College while pursuing a parallel career in theatre.  Her book,
A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras, was published by Cornell University Press in 2007.  In 2008, it was awarded the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association, the David Pinkney Prize of the Society for French Historical Studies, and the David Bevington Award of the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society.  Dr. Symes was the recipient of the Dean's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois.

Thanks to a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study Dr. Symes began work on a new book project, tentatively titled "Modern War and the Medieval Past: The Middle Ages of World War I," and she also spent two months in England as Distinguished Research Scholar at the University of York.  In the fall of 2008, she was Visiting Associate Professor of History at Harvard.