Jacqueline M. Burek

Jacqueline M. Burek

Jacqueline M. Burek

Assistant Professor

Literature: Medieval literature; medieval historiography; translation; rhetoric; classical reception; Welsh and Celtic Studies

My research focuses on medieval historical writing, and in particular, the ways in which medieval authors conceptualize and write about 'the past.' I work primarily on English, Latin, and Welsh historiography, from Bede to the Middle English Prose Brut. More broadly, I am also interested in classical reception and in literary texts that theorize temporality.

I have published several articles on history-writing in medieval Britain. My first book, Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century (York Medieval Press/Boydell & Brewer, 2023) explores the relationship between political history and formal variety in post-Conquest Britain. I argue that medieval historians represent the fragmentation of the insular past in literary form, and I trace the development of literary varietas from twelfth-century Latin prose histories to fourteenth-century Middle English verse chroniclers. I am currently at work on a second book on the relationship between memory and literature in medieval historical writing.

In addition, I am currently working on two further projects: first, a study of an early modern Welsh translation of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde; and second, a reevaluation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's use of Lucan in his Historia regum Britanniae

At Mason, I am also the Director of the Minor in Medieval Studies and the Coordinator of the English Honors Program.

Grants and Fellowships

Organizational Grant, North America Wales Foundation (2022)

Center for Humanities Research Fellow, George Mason University (2021-2022)

Fenwick Fellow, George Mason University (2018-2019)

Graduate Research Fellow, Wolf Humanities Center, University of Pennsylvania (2016-2017)

Fulbright-Aberystwyth University Award, US-UK Fulbright Commission (2014-2015)

Courses Taught

ENGH 203: Survey of Western Literary Traditions, I

ENGH 305: Dimensions of Writing and Literature

ENGH 309: Epic

ENGH 320: Literature of the Middle Ages

ENGH 400/511: Literature of the Plague

ENGH 421: Memory and Identity in the Middle Ages

ENGH 422: Chaucer

HNRS 240: The History of Memory

Education

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, English (2017)

B.A. (summa cum laude), Cornell University, Medieval Studies and Latin (2010)