Colin Symes
Biographic Data
| ID | 760846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Colin Symes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Colin |
| FAMILY NAME | Symes |
| SIGNATURE | SYMES C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9748-7446 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 114 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Why Europe? Why the Nation
Medievalists in the Mirror: Looking Back to the World of 1925 and Its Legacy
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 op…
Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Perspectives from the Mediterranean and Beyond, by Lori Jones and Nükhet Varlık
Thomas W. Smith. Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages
Noticing houses: An analysis of the vernacular landscape of south Marrickville and Tempe, Sydney, Australia
Residential suburbs are not deserts of signage. Alongside the signs imposed by local governments to aid citizens navigate their neighborhoods, there are signs assigned by property owners. These include house numbers and names as well as various forms of semiotic control. Often multi-modal in format, they are designed to deter strangers from violating properties, depositing unwanted advertising and so on. Yet much of this signage in the residentia…
Shielding the learned body: A semiotic analysis of school badges in New South Wales, Australia
School badges, though an integral part of education's "aesthetic order," of its signage and apparel, have not been the subjects of much of analysis. In addressing this oversight, the following paper examines the badges of New South Wales government schools and argues that like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, they draw on heraldic models and are constructs of colors, names, motifs, and mottoes that in various ways have local cogency and…
Sitting on the fence: A geosemiotic analysis of school perimeters
Analysis of the Linguistic Landscape of schools has by and large concentrated on that in classrooms rather than that mounted on their boundaries, on their perimeter architecture. In the last decade, this architecture has become a rich site for semiotic expression, where schools project not just their own brand but also that of enterprises that sponsor and support them. Following an extensive analysis of the advertisements, signs, and banners arou…
Afterword: Documenting Performance across the Medieval/Modern Frontier
As an afterword to the special issue of JMEMS “Performance beyond Drama,” this essay reflects on the complex ways that premodern performances and their embodied actors are captured in, mediated by, or dependent on the texts that we use to study them, and on the special importance of examining this process across a temporal framework—the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries—that challenges the periodizing schema of modernity. In particular, three maj…
Medieval Fictions vs. the Fetish of Modernity
Odd that fiction would be yet another invention claimed for modernity. Yes, that's the way modernity's game is played; and still I marvel that our modernist colleagues never seem tired of playing it, or insisting on the ontology of their favorite fetish. Julie Orlemanski and Michelle Karnes contest this modernist heuristic and insist instead on fiction's contingency and the crucial role of the reader in its determination, thereby helping to disma…
Something to write home about: A ‘textography’ of contemporary postcards
The relative compactness of postcards belies their significance as vehicles for much that is interesting about tourism. In providing vignettes of holiday happenings and tourist events, they are invaluable documents, which hold much that is telling about how individuals chronicle being on the move and in alien places. They are a form of travel writing, but one which has not attracted much scholarly attention, or if it has, then it has been restric…
Medievalism and Political Rhetoric in Humanist Historiography from the Low Countries (1515–1609)
Medievalism and Political Rhetoric in Humanist Historiography from the Low Countries (1515–1609). Coen Maas. Proteus: Studies in Early Modern Identity Formation 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018. xx + 542 pp. €125. - Volume 72 Issue 4
Checks and Balances: The Semiotics of Ticketing on Victorian Railways, During the 1930s and 1940s
As well as transforming the way terrestrial space was traversed, railways spearheaded texts that enabled passenger traversal of such spaces to be regulated and monitored. Among the most important of these texts was the railway ticket, which as a pre-electronic information storage device, was capable of encoding through semiotic inscription, details of a passenger’s spatial entitlements, both on and off a train. Yet curiously these facets of the t…
Doing Things beside Domesday Book
Liturgical Texts and Performance Practices
This chapter focuses on the problematic relationship between medieval texts and contemporary performance practices in the many contexts that could be considered 'liturgical'. It provides the nature of liturgical texts and their relationship to performance at the centre of inquiry. The chancy survival of liturgical texts has been stressed: the readers have noted how accident and negligence or reliance on oral tradition and improvisation can affect…
Legal Encounters on the Medieval Globe
Kingdom, where she works on diverse aspects of mobility in the precolonial
Making moves: Theorizations of education and mobility
In the last few decades or so, there have been a number of ‘turns’ in social and cultural theory – the spatial, linguistic, punitive and so forth. The application of the word ‘turn’ indicates the a
Popular Literacies and the First Historians of the First Crusade
The earliest histories of the First Crusade were informed by the testimonies of combatants who aligned their experiences with available historical models, especially the master narrative of sacred history. Within a few years of the Christian occupation of Jerusalem, and several years before elite monastic chroniclers began their work, laymen and clerics who had participated in the crusade were producing narratives that circulated in small booklet…
Education on the rails: A textual ethnography of university advertising in mobile contexts
As universities have succumbed to market discourses, they have adopted advertising strategies. It is not uncommon to see advertisements for them displayed in such mobile spaces as railway stations and alongside highways. Whilst it is true that such environments have always sought to take advantage of populations in transit, the fact that higher education institutions have turned to them as promotional sites, reflects the fact that the ‘transit’ d…
Even Our 2nd Class Cars are More Comfortable Than Motor Buses!”: An Analysis of Victorian Railway Posters Between the Wars
Railway posters from the 1920s and 1930s are now regarded as one of the high points of twentieth-century graphic art. While their iconographies have been the subject of considerable scholarly analysis, the contexts in which they operated and functioned have received much less attention. This paper, which focuses on posters produced by Victorian Railways for a range of purposes not necessarily travel related, redresses this. It is argued that rail…
The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval Charters
Research Article| September 01 2015 The “Desire of Deeds”: On Cherishing Medieval Charters Carol Symes Carol Symes University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [email protected] Carol Symes is the Lynn M. Martin Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is associate professor of History, Theatre, and Medieval Studies. She is the author of A Common Stage: Theatre and Public Life in Medieval Arras (2007) and c…
Motion pictures: An analysis of the posters of Victorian Railways during the 1920s and 1930s
One element of the unrelenting enthusiasm for railway history is the poster. It is evident in the large body of literature, both academic and lay, on the subject. The majority of the literature though, deals with the posters of North America and Europe. Their Australian counterparts have not received the attention they deserve, something this paper attempts to redress. It undertakes an extensive examination of the many railway posters produced by…
Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death
This ground-breaking book brings together scholars from the humanities and social and physical sciences to address the question of how recent work in the genetics, zoology, and epidemiology of plague's causative organism (Yersinia pestis) can allow a rethinking of the Black Death pandemic and its larger historical significance
The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Volume 2: 400–1400, Ed. Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson
Journal Article The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Volume 2: 400–1400, ed. Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson Get access The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Volume 2: 400–1400, ed. Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2012; pp. xxiv + 646. £95). Carol Symes Carol Symes 1University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Vol…
Entr'acte: Mobile Choreography and Sydney Rail Commuters
The significance of the journey as a component of travel has been overlooked. The mobility turn has remedied this. There is now intense interest in mobility practices, in life on the move, and the cultures generated in vehicular environments. Though commuting is one of the most mundane, popular and ubiquitous forms of mobility, it is only beginning to receive the attention that is its due. In this paper, a mobile ethnography of commuting in Sydne…
Remote control: A spatial-history of correspondence schooling in New South Wales, Australia
In large continental landmasses such as Australia, forms of education, including correspondence schooling, emerged in the early twentieth century that allowed children in remote regions to access education. To make such schooling possible, other ‘technologies’ of state provision were mobilised such as the postal system, rail network, and radio stations. One of the curious, under-analysed features of correspondence schooling – a state sponsored fo…
Knowing one's place: Space, theory, education
In the latter parts of the twentieth century social theory took a spatial turn, one that education has yet to undertake, at least in any concerted way. Nonetheless, this paper aims to demonstrate that there could be, and perhaps is, a more decided turn towards unraveling spatial questions underpinning educational processes and practices. In this paper, we briefly set out the key ‘trajectories’ of space in social theory. We also examine what happe…
Coaching and Training: An Ethnography of Student Commuting on Sydney's Suburban Trains
Public transport systems in Australia receive subsidies from state governments to facilitate the movement of students to and from schools. During the educational peak hours, students on their way to and from school dominate the demographics of buses and trains. Policies of de‐zoning plus the drift to non‐government schooling have increased the numbers of students commuting each day. As with commuting in general, student commuting is taken for gra…
Entr'acte: Mobile Choreography and Sydney Rail Commuters
The significance of the journey as a component of travel has been overlooked. The mobility turn has remedied this. There is now intense interest in mobility practices, in life on the move, and the cultures generated in vehicular environments. Though commuting is one of the most mundane, popular and ubiquitous forms of mobility, it is only beginning to receive the attention that is its due. In this paper, a mobile ethnography of commuting in Sydne…
Chronicles of Labour: A Discourse Analysis of Diaries
Diaries are important texts in the world, and provide textualizations of time that incorporate revealing features of the contemporary organization of time. Much previous analysis of diaries has confined itself to the nature of their contents rather than their form and layout. This paper redresses this. It argues that the design of the diary contains important clues as to the modern organization of time, particularly as it has developed over the l…
The Genealogy of the School: An iconography of badges and mottoes
This paper reports on an investigation into central features of institutional schooling that, collectively, constitute the ‘symbolic architecture’ of education. In particular, this paper provides an analysis of the practices associated with school uniform, badges and mottoes, drawn from a sample of over 500 schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The analysis reveals a large degree of uniformity in the meaning content of these school icons…
Making moves: Theorizations of education and mobility
In the last few decades or so, there have been a number of ‘turns’ in social and cultural theory – the spatial, linguistic, punitive and so forth. The application of the word ‘turn’ indicates the a
Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity
This paper analyses policies pertaining to school dress codes which have been formulated recently by all state education bureaucracies in Australia. It examines these policies and their implementation in the context of devolution, the marketisation of schools, and cognate social legislation. In doing so it seeks to understand the textual hiatus between government policy and schooling practices
Of Uniform Appearance: A Symbol of School Discipline and Governmentality
The very garments that in some places are given them (children), and their maintenance in all of them by charity, are the constant badges and proofs of their dependence and poverty; and should therefore teach them humility and their parents thankfulness. (Samuel Harmar, 1642, cited in Pinchebeck & Hewitt, 1969)
No time on their hands: Children and the narrative architecture of school diaries
Diaries are elements of a school's documentary reality. They possess a complex 'narrative architecture' and serve multiple functions. In addition to playing an important role in inducting students into the adroit chronometry of contemporary work, the school diary is also a manual of self-government, given that much of it deals with goal setting, managing health and conflict resolution. On the grounds that it ameliorates communication between the …
The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theater
The Middle Ages between Nationalism and Colonialism
Research Article| February 01 2011 The Middle Ages between Nationalism and Colonialism Carol Symes Carol Symes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2011) 34 (1): 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-2010-021 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Sea…
The Paradox of the Canon: Edward W. Said and musical transgression
Said's chief claim to fame as a scholar is the contribution he made to understanding the power and knowledge behind European colonialism. Less well known is his contribution to music, specifically classical music, which formed a prominent focus of his intellectual energies during the latter years of his life. For Said, who was a proficient pianist who had trained at Julliard, music formed an important backdrop to his overall intellectual project,…
Working Knowledge: Australian Universities and "Real World" Education
Selling futures: A new image for Australian universities
In the last decade or so Australia's higher education has undergone a period of reform. A significant element of this reform is the degree to which the university has been held to be accountable in terms of the economic needs of the nation. More than ever before the university has been forced into producing the human capital needs of the Australian economy. This policy shift has seen the emergence of a more instrumental university. This shift is …
Shielding the learned body: A semiotic analysis of school badges in New South Wales, Australia
School badges, though an integral part of education's "aesthetic order," of its signage and apparel, have not been the subjects of much of analysis. In addressing this oversight, the following paper examines the badges of New South Wales government schools and argues that like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, they draw on heraldic models and are constructs of colors, names, motifs, and mottoes that in various ways have local cogency and…
Something to write home about: A ‘textography’ of contemporary postcards
The relative compactness of postcards belies their significance as vehicles for much that is interesting about tourism. In providing vignettes of holiday happenings and tourist events, they are invaluable documents, which hold much that is telling about how individuals chronicle being on the move and in alien places. They are a form of travel writing, but one which has not attracted much scholarly attention, or if it has, then it has been restric…
Popular Literacies and the First Historians of the First Crusade
The earliest histories of the First Crusade were informed by the testimonies of combatants who aligned their experiences with available historical models, especially the master narrative of sacred history. Within a few years of the Christian occupation of Jerusalem, and several years before elite monastic chroniclers began their work, laymen and clerics who had participated in the crusade were producing narratives that circulated in small booklet…
Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death
This ground-breaking book brings together scholars from the humanities and social and physical sciences to address the question of how recent work in the genetics, zoology, and epidemiology of plague's causative organism (Yersinia pestis) can allow a rethinking of the Black Death pandemic and its larger historical significance
Remote control: A spatial-history of correspondence schooling in New South Wales, Australia
In large continental landmasses such as Australia, forms of education, including correspondence schooling, emerged in the early twentieth century that allowed children in remote regions to access education. To make such schooling possible, other ‘technologies’ of state provision were mobilised such as the postal system, rail network, and radio stations. One of the curious, under-analysed features of correspondence schooling – a state sponsored fo…
All at sea: An auto-ethnography of a slowed community, on a container ship
Travelling by cruise ship is undergoing a renaissance. It is more popular than ever. It represents a return to slowness as a revered aspect of mobility. Journeys are valued for their own sake. This paper examines life aboard a container ship, which is not only slow but also ‘visits’ ports sans tourist allure. In what is a working not a pleasure space, passengers are left to their own devices, for there is an absence of the organized hedonism that…
In this country education happen at the home’: Two families in search of the instruments of appropriation for school success
The article analyses ethnographic data from the study of the home literacy practices of two immigrant families, a Lebanese-Muslim and a Chinese family. It explores the experiences of the immigrant families as they blend the pedagogical practices and behaviours of their own cultures with those of the mainstream culture to ensure academic success in dominant literacies. Data reveal that for the families in this study, the acquisition of mainstream …
The History of Medieval Theatre / Theatre of Medieval History: Dramatic Documents and the Performance of the Past
Theatre history has long been a sub‐discipline of literary criticism or, more recently, performance studies; it is usually not the province of trained historians. While potentially problematic for the study of any period, this trend has had a particularly limiting effect on the study of medieval drama and its larger historical contexts. This article explains why, offers a brief overview of medieval theatre's modern history and the current state o…
From Tomorrow’s Eve to High Fidelity: Novel Responses to the Gramophone in Twentieth Century Literature
Music and literature have long-standing links. Music has drawn on literature, and vice versa. The advent of the phonograph transformed the condition of music in myriad ways. It made music more accessible and more portable. It also created a new industry of music makers: record producers and engineers, recording artists and record journalists. In this paper I examine the literary responses to the phonograph, and argue that novelists such as Jules …
Beating up the classics: Aspects of a Compact Discourse
Although much has been written about the changes wrought to art in the age of mechanical reproduction, these same changes as they have impacted on music through the phenomenon of the phonograph have not received equivalent attention or, if they have, then their discussion has been restricted to particular sectors of the music industry. This failure to address an important facet of contemporary music practice derives from a continuing tendency to …
Taking people for a ride: Dreamworld, sea world and movieworld as excursive practice
Thomas Hardy and a Novel Representation of Education
(1991). THOMAS HARDY AND A NOVEL REPRESENTATION OF EDUCATION. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 1-21
Secondary Education in Queensland: Never a Matter of Primary Concern
Taking people for a ride: Dreamworld, sea world and movieworld as excursive practice
The Genealogy of the School: An iconography of badges and mottoes
This paper reports on an investigation into central features of institutional schooling that, collectively, constitute the ‘symbolic architecture’ of education. In particular, this paper provides an analysis of the practices associated with school uniform, badges and mottoes, drawn from a sample of over 500 schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The analysis reveals a large degree of uniformity in the meaning content of these school icons…
Selling futures: A new image for Australian universities
In the last decade or so Australia's higher education has undergone a period of reform. A significant element of this reform is the degree to which the university has been held to be accountable in terms of the economic needs of the nation. More than ever before the university has been forced into producing the human capital needs of the Australian economy. This policy shift has seen the emergence of a more instrumental university. This shift is …
Of Uniform Appearance: A Symbol of School Discipline and Governmentality
The very garments that in some places are given them (children), and their maintenance in all of them by charity, are the constant badges and proofs of their dependence and poverty; and should therefore teach them humility and their parents thankfulness. (Samuel Harmar, 1642, cited in Pinchebeck & Hewitt, 1969)
Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity
This paper analyses policies pertaining to school dress codes which have been formulated recently by all state education bureaucracies in Australia. It examines these policies and their implementation in the context of devolution, the marketisation of schools, and cognate social legislation. In doing so it seeks to understand the textual hiatus between government policy and schooling practices
Beating up the classics: Aspects of a Compact Discourse
Although much has been written about the changes wrought to art in the age of mechanical reproduction, these same changes as they have impacted on music through the phenomenon of the phonograph have not received equivalent attention or, if they have, then their discussion has been restricted to particular sectors of the music industry. This failure to address an important facet of contemporary music practice derives from a continuing tendency to …
Education and the Postmodern Turn
Chronicles of Labour: A Discourse Analysis of Diaries
Diaries are important texts in the world, and provide textualizations of time that incorporate revealing features of the contemporary organization of time. Much previous analysis of diaries has confined itself to the nature of their contents rather than their form and layout. This paper redresses this. It argues that the design of the diary contains important clues as to the modern organization of time, particularly as it has developed over the l…
Working Knowledge: Australian Universities and "Real World" Education
At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins, and Bodies in the Middle Ages . Andrew Cowell
Food and nutrient intakes of a population sample of 3-year-old children in the South West of England in 1996
Objective: To investigate food and nutrient intakes in 3-year-old children. Subjects: Eight hundred and sixty-three children resident in South West England (69% of those invited at this age), a randomly selected sub-sample of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ALSPAC). Methods: Diet was assessed using a 3-day descriptive food record. Food and nutrient intakes were compared with intakes at 18 months in the same children, with …
The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theater
Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman . Bonnie Wheeler
Pierre Abélard . Jean Jolivet , Henri Habrias
From Tomorrow’s Eve to High Fidelity: Novel Responses to the Gramophone in Twentieth Century Literature
Music and literature have long-standing links. Music has drawn on literature, and vice versa. The advent of the phonograph transformed the condition of music in myriad ways. It made music more accessible and more portable. It also created a new industry of music makers: record producers and engineers, recording artists and record journalists. In this paper I examine the literary responses to the phonograph, and argue that novelists such as Jules …
The Paradox of the Canon: Edward W. Said and musical transgression
Said's chief claim to fame as a scholar is the contribution he made to understanding the power and knowledge behind European colonialism. Less well known is his contribution to music, specifically classical music, which formed a prominent focus of his intellectual energies during the latter years of his life. For Said, who was a proficient pianist who had trained at Julliard, music formed an important backdrop to his overall intellectual project,…
Spatial Theories of Education: Policy and Geography Matters
Knowing one's place: Space, theory, education
In the latter parts of the twentieth century social theory took a spatial turn, one that education has yet to undertake, at least in any concerted way. Nonetheless, this paper aims to demonstrate that there could be, and perhaps is, a more decided turn towards unraveling spatial questions underpinning educational processes and practices. In this paper, we briefly set out the key ‘trajectories’ of space in social theory. We also examine what happe…
Coaching and Training: An Ethnography of Student Commuting on Sydney's Suburban Trains
Public transport systems in Australia receive subsidies from state governments to facilitate the movement of students to and from schools. During the educational peak hours, students on their way to and from school dominate the demographics of buses and trains. Policies of de‐zoning plus the drift to non‐government schooling have increased the numbers of students commuting each day. As with commuting in general, student commuting is taken for gra…
The History of Medieval Theatre / Theatre of Medieval History: Dramatic Documents and the Performance of the Past
Theatre history has long been a sub‐discipline of literary criticism or, more recently, performance studies; it is usually not the province of trained historians. While potentially problematic for the study of any period, this trend has had a particularly limiting effect on the study of medieval drama and its larger historical contexts. This article explains why, offers a brief overview of medieval theatre's modern history and the current state o…
On paper, on air, on screen: ‘Teledidactics’ and Education at the Margins, 1920–1950
In this paper, I examine the provenance of distance education or 'teledidactics' in Australia. I take as my case studies the New South Wales Correspondence School and the School of the Air and suggest that their emergence was underpinned by a desire on the part of educational and broadcasting bureaucrats to increase the equity of school provision by addressing the problem of educating remote populations. I argue that this problem was ultimately s…
In this country education happen at the home’: Two families in search of the instruments of appropriation for school success
The article analyses ethnographic data from the study of the home literacy practices of two immigrant families, a Lebanese-Muslim and a Chinese family. It explores the experiences of the immigrant families as they blend the pedagogical practices and behaviours of their own cultures with those of the mainstream culture to ensure academic success in dominant literacies. Data reveal that for the families in this study, the acquisition of mainstream …
The Middle Ages between Nationalism and Colonialism
Research Article| February 01 2011 The Middle Ages between Nationalism and Colonialism Carol Symes Carol Symes Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2011) 34 (1): 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-2010-021 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Sea…
Sociology (32 works) · History (30 works) · Art (24 works) · Political science (23 works) · History (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Literature (12 works) · Aesthetics (11 works) · Law (11 works)