Medieval literature; medieval historiography; translation; rhetoric; classical reception; Welsh and Celtic Studies
Jacqueline Burek is assistant 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 also studies the medieval reception of classical literature, especially Latin epic.
Dr. Burek's 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. It argues that medieval historians represent the fragmentation of the insular past in literary form. Building on research conducted during her Fulbright fellowship, Dr. Burek traces the development of this uniquely historically-inflected literary variety (Latin varietas) from classical rhetorical treatises to twelfth-century Latin prose histories, and from there to fourteenth-century Middle English verse chroniclers. In this way, Literary Variety draws new connections across languages, genres, and political perspectives.
Dr. Burek has also 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 forthcoming work includes essays on Robert Mannyng’s Story of Inglande and the anonymous thirteenth-century Vita Haroldi.
She is currently at work on a second book investigating the relationship between memory and truth in medieval historical writing. This project studies medieval literary forgeries to explore how medieval historians would have understood the injunction to be truthful when narrating the past. In addition, Dr. Burek is 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 the Roman epic poet Lucan in his Historia regum Britanniae.
At Mason, Dr. Burek is also the Director of the Minor in Medieval Studies and the Coordinator of the English Honors Program.
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)
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
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, English (2017)
B.A. (summa cum laude), Cornell University, Medieval Studies and Latin (2010)