About

Carol Lynne Symes is a Professor of History and the Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois. Her research centers on premodern documentary cultures, forms of literacy, and access to writing and communication media in various contexts, including civic, legal, ritual, and entertainment settings. She has published extensively on the material, negotiated, and performative processes of textual creation, the transmission and preservation of dramatic texts and practices, and the role of medievalism in modern cultural trends and political projects. Symes is also a professional actor and theatre practitioner, with published stageworthy verse translations of medieval Latin and vernacular plays, including the world premiere of her translation of The Play of Adam at The Cloisters in New York.

Research topics

• Astronomy
• History
• Art
• Literature
• Physics
• Geography
• Ancient history
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Thomas W. Smith. <i>Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages</i>

  The American Historical Review · 2025-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Perspectives from the Mediterranean and Beyond, by Lori Jones and Nükhet Varlık

  The English Historical Review · 2025-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval English Charters

  2024-10-17

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The Harvard Law Library is home to an impressive collection of medieval manuscripts relating to the development of the English Common Law and its everyday applications, including a trove of medieval deeds and charters dating from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. In this essay, the former curator of that collection analyzes the ways that these living legal artifacts serve as material repositories of memory and meaning—for those who initially used and kept them, and for the future generations who continue to view them as evidence for our collective connection to the past and its enduring legacy.

  PublisherDOI

• Medievalists in the Mirror: Looking Back to the World of 1925 and Its Legacy

  Speculum · 2024-12-16 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In 1925, the Medieval Academy was hastily incorporated to launch a journal whose title, Speculum, mirrored a distinctively American medievalism. Rooted in an ideology of “Anglo-Saxon” exceptionalism dating back to the colonial era, this engagement with the medieval past was both strengthened and complicated by the emergence of the United States as a global power. By 1920, the devastation of European cultural patrimony and intellectual networks opened new avenues for American intervention, exemplified by the direct involvement of Charles Homer Haskins (a future president of the Academy) in the negotiation of national self-determination after the Great War. This article surveys the conditions shaping the first generations of American academics who catalyzed the invention of a new field, medieval studies. It then offers a revisionist history of the Academy’s establishment based on its own archives, which reveal how the work of constructing this field was largely accomplished by members of the academic precariat or faculty at new public universities, whose grassroots campaign and collective initiatives were later obscured by the few self-proclaimed founders who came to control the institutional narrative. It concludes by reflecting on the priorities and prejudices that would limit the scope of medieval studies in the following decades.

  PublisherDOI

• Frontmatter

  2023-07-10

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Chapter 1 A Performance Dramaturgy

  2023-07-10

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  2023-07-10

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• List of Illustrations

  2023-07-10

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Contents

  2023-07-10

  paratextOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bibliography

  2023-07-10

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kyle A. Thomas

  13 shared

• Monica H. Green

  4 shared

• Edward Peters

  University of Nebraska Medical Center

  3 shared

• Joshua Cole

  3 shared

• Susan Mosher Stuard

  3 shared

• Lawrence M. Clopper

  3 shared

• Nicola Carpentieri

  University of Padua

  3 shared

• William Chester Jordan

  3 shared

Labs

• Carol Lynne Symes LabPI

Awards & honors

• Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Associ…
• John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America
• Medieval Academy of America's Kindrick-CARA Award for servic…
• University Scholar (2022-2025)
• Dean's Distinguished Professor (2023-24)