Jacqueline M. Burek

Associate Professor

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

Jacqueline Burek is Associate Professor in Medieval Literature. Her research focuses on medieval historical writing, and in particular, the ways in which medieval authors conceptualize and write about 'the past.' She works primarily on historiography in Latin, Middle English, and Middle Welsh, from Bede to the Middle English Prose Brut. She is particularly interested in the influence of classical rhetoric and literature on medieval history-writing.

Dr. Burek has published several articles and essays on medieval historiography and literature in a range of venues, from the Review of English Studies to The Journal of Medieval Latin. Her first book, Literary Variety and the Writing of History in Britain's Long Twelfth Century (York Medieval Press, 2023) examined the influence of classical notions of literary variety (varietas) on conceptions of historical discontinuity in post-Conquest Britain. She is currently at work on a second book investigating the relationship between memory and history-writing in medieval historical writing.

At Mason, Dr. Burek serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department. She is also the Director of the Minor in Medieval Studies.

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

ENGH 511: Medieval Plague Literature

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)