Robert M. Stein, Ph.D. 
Professor of Literature
School of Humanities
Office: 1007 HUM Building
Tel: (914) 251-6565
Fax: 251-6559
Email: robert.stein@purchase.edu
Dr. Robert Stein is a professor of literature in the School of Humanities. His interests include literature and the writing of history in the Middle Ages, Chaucer and Dante, and medieval music. He is a translator and language consultant for the Waverly Consort and other early music groups. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, for example from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Columbia University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Education
- B.A., 1965, Hofstra University
- M.A., 1966, Columbia University
- Ph.D., 1977, Columbia University
Positions
- Special Instructor, 1966, Prairie View A.&M. College
- Instructor, 1966-70, Hofstra College
- Instructor, 1971-73, Columbia University
- Instructor, 1973-75, City College, CUNY
- Lecturer, 1976-77, Adjunct Professor, 1988-present, Columbia University
- Assistant Professor, 1977-81, Purchase College, SUNY
- Associate Professor, 1981-present, Purchase College, SUNY
- Full Professor, 2005-present, Puchase College, SUNY
Areas of Expertise
Literature and historiography of the European Middle Ages; Chaucer; Dante; contemporary critical theory.
Honors and Awards
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, 1965-66; Special Fellowship for Studies in the Middle Ages, 1966-67, Columbia University; George F. Woodbridge Distinguished Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy, 1972-73; National Endowment for the Humanities, 1985, Summer Research Seminar; UUP Faculty Development Grant, Spring 1994; SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1994; UUP Classroom Scholarship Grant, Fall 1994, "Development of a curriculum for writing instruction making use of on-line computer technology"; National Endowment for the Humanities, 1996-97, Fellowship for College Teachers (granted but unfunded); National Endowment for the Humanities, 1997-98, Fellowship for College Teachers; Purchase College Foundation Special Grant for Medieval Studies (summer salary and research and travel expenses, given by an anonymous donor for faculty development, 1999-2000); Purchase College Foundation Special Grant for Medieval Studies (one year’s leave and research expenses, given by an anonymous donor for faculty development, Spring and Fall 2001); Faculty Development Grant, Fall 2005; Jim Greenwood Faculty Development Award, Spring 2006.
Courses Taught
Purchase College: all offerings in English and European medieval literature: Chaucer; Dante; English and European Renaissance Literature, narrative theory.
Columbia University: The History of Critical Theory; Graduate Seminars in Critical Theory and Medieval Narrative; Chaucer; The Writing of History in the Middle Ages.
Artistic Interests
Medieval music (regular translator and language consultant for the Waverly Consort and other early music groups).
Research Interests
The writing of history in the Middle Ages; European narrative literature; epic and romance.
Publications
Books
Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025-1180
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)
A study of the emergence in the twelfth century of historical chronicle and chivalric romance. These genres first appear among those people most affected by Angevin and Capetian state-making and quickly become the dominant kinds of narrative expression throughout Europe. Instability of power, authority, and territoriality, changes in the relations of public and private life, and the emergence of particular forms of subjectivity are, I contend, both the context of these texts and their thematic contents. Analysis of a particular set of exemplary texts—including the Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, various historical treatments of the death of Harold Godwinson and the life of the notorious Earl Waltheof, the fictional chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the Lais of Marie de France—in the context of transformations in the particular social formations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries can serve as a test case for generally addressing the relations between social transformations and changes in modes of representation. In this way, the study intends to further the profession-wide attempt to re-investigate the possibilities of the social and historical study of texts after the "linguistic turn" of the previous several decades. Early research was made possible by grants from the Purchase College Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1997-1998.
Reading Medieval Culture: Essays on Medieval Literature and Culture in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame Press, 2005), co-edited with Sandra Pierson Prior. A collection of essays by Hanning's students, friends, and admirers, all new work specifically commisioned by the editors for this volume. Introduction by the editors.
Articles:
"Shakuntala: The Girl and the Lotus," in P. Lal, Great Sanskrit Plays (New York: New Directions, 1964), ix, 9-12.
"Europe--history, the medieval period," Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopaedia, Revised Edition (New York, 1983), signed article. (Republished on CD-ROM, Microsoft Encarta 1996 and subsequently).
"The Middle Ages," Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopaedia, Revised Edition (New York, 1983), signed article. (Republished on CD-ROM, Microsoft Encarta 1996 - 2002).
"Signs and Things: The Vita Heinrici IV. Imperatoris and the Crisis of Interpretation in Twelfth-Century History, Traditio, 40:1987 [issued summer 1989] 105-119.
"Walter Benjamin," in European Writers--The Twentieth Century vol XI, general editor, George Stade (New York: Scribners, 1990), 1703-1731.
"Desire, Social Reproduction, and Marie's Guigemar," in In Quest of Marie de France, A Twelfth Century Poet," edited by Chantal A. Maréchal, Medieval and Renaissance Series, Vol 10, Guy Mermier, general editor (Lewiston: Mellen, 1992), 280-294.
"Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern: Medieval Studies in a Post-Modern Perspective" Cultural Frictions: Medieval Cultural Studies in Post-Modern Contexts, Georgetown University, October, 1995. Published in hypertext: http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/conf/cs95/papers/stein.html.
"The Conquest of Femenye: Desire, Power, and Narrative in Chaucer's Knight's Tale" in Desiring Discourse, The Literature of Love, Ovid through Chaucer, edited by James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee (Susquehanna University Press, 1998) 188-205
"Making History English: Cultural Identity and Historical Explanation in William of Malmesbury and Layamon's Brut" in Text and Territory, edited by Sealy A. Gilles and Sylvia Tomasch (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) 97-115.
"The Trouble With Harold: The Ideological Context of the Vita Haroldi", New Medieval Literatures 2, edited by Rita Copeland, Wendy Scase, and David Lawton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 181-204.
"The Task of the Historian," review article of The Past as Text by Gabrielle Spiegel, History and Theory 40:2 (2001) 261-266.
"Fictional Plots and Historical Explanation: A Response to David Leeson's 'Cutting Through History'" Left History 10:1 (Fall/Winter 2004) 47-50.
"Literary Criticism and the Evidence for History" in Nancy F. Partner, ed. Writing Medieval History: Theory and Practice for the Post-Traditional Middle Ages (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 67-87.
"Spiritual Authority and Secular Power: The Historical Argument of the Gesta Episcoporum Cameracensis," in Lawrence Besserman, ed., The Sacred/Secular Dichotomy in Medieval and Early-Modern Culture: New Essays. (Palgrave, 2006) 149 – 165.
"Death from a Trivial Cause: Events and Their Explanation in Galbert of Bruges' Chronicle" in Jeff Rider and Alan V. Murray, Galbert of Bruges and the Historiography of Medieval Flanders (Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming 2008).
"Multilinguality in England 1066-1300" for Middle English:Twenty-first Century Approaches to Literature, Paul Strohm, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2007) 23 - 37.
With Martin Elsky and Martin Vialon, “Scholarship in Times of Extremes: Letters of Erich Auerbach (1935-1946), on the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Death” PMLA 122 (2007) : 742 – 762.
Translations:
For the Folger Shakespeare Library Early Music Consort, October 1979, Fourteen Late Medieval Motets and Chansons (Latin, Old French, German).
For The Waverly Consort, New York, NY (I give the dates of the translation's original use in the New York season. Various pieces have been subsequently used again in performance or on record): Music of the Hapsburg Courts (1981), Music of Venice (1982), Music of Florence (1983), Music of Rome and Naples (1983), Music of Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan (1984), Music of Bach and Schütz (1985), Orlando de Lassus and his Age (1986), Monteverdi (1986), Music at the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine (1988), Music in the Age of Humanism (1988), Music of Monteverdi and his Age (1989), Monteverdi/Badoardo Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria the complete libretto (1989), Italy in 1492 (1991), Music from the Age of Exploration (1991). (Translations from Latin, German, French, Italian, Provençal, Catalan and their various local dialects).
For The Boston Camerata, Music for a Medieval Christmas, Nonesuch Records, 1988 (Latin, German, Catalan).
Reviews:
Review, "Translations of the Works of Chrétien de Troyes," Envoi, a Review Journal of Medieval Studies, Spring/Summer 1988, 100-108.
Review. "The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image Making in Medieval Art by Michael Camille" Envoi: a Review Journal of Medieval Studies 3:1 Spring 1991, 237-239.
Review, "A Rhetoric of the Scene: Dramatic Narrative in the Early Middle Ages by Joaquin M. Pizarro," Envoi: a Review Journal of Medieval Studies 3:1 Spring 1991, 257-259.
Review Article "Feed the Birds," review of The Owl and the Nightingale: Musical Life in France, 1100-1450 by Christopher Page in Historical Performance, (Fall 1992) 93-96.
Review, The Art of Medieval French Romance by Douglas Kelly, Envoi: a Review Journal of Medieval Studies 5:1 (Spring 1994) 31-39.
Review: Jean Blacker, Faces of Time: Portrait of the Past in Old Frech and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum (Austin: Texas, 1994) for Arthuriana, 5:4 (Winter 1995) 120-124.
Review: George Economou, Century Dead Center, in Provincetown Arts (Summer 1999)
Review: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Postcolonial Middle Ages in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23 (2001) 538-543.
Review: Sian Echard, Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition in Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (Spring 2001) 219-221.
Review: Anne-Marie Levine, Busride to a Blue Movie in Harvard Review, 26 (Spring 2004) 205-207.