Timothy Stinson

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Bio

Timothy Stinson is Associate Professor of English and a University Faculty Scholar at North Carolina State University. He received his PhD in English Language and Literature in 2006 from the University of Virginia and was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University for two years prior to joining the NC State faculty in 2008. He is a member of the program faculty for the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Program and an affiliate faculty of the Jewish Studies program.

Stinson’s research has garnered numerous awards and grants, including support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council on Information and Library Resources, and the Bibliographical Society of America, and he has held fellowships from both the NEH and the National Humanities Center. He has published in leading journals in the field of medieval studies and book history, including Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, The Chaucer Review,The Yearbook of Langland Studies, Manuscript Studies, and The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. His work has also garnered recognition and support from North Carolina State University, where he is a University Faculty Scholar and has received a CHASS Research Award, two Research and Innovation Seed Funding Awards, and a Non-Laboratory Scholarship/Research Award. His research interests include Middle English poetry, codicology, history of the book, and digital humanities.

Stinson is a leader in the application of digital technologies to medieval studies. He is co-founder and co-director of the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance, director of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET), co-director of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, associate director of the Advanced Research Consortium (ARC), and editor of the Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Fellowship and has received planning and implementation grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for his digital humanities work. He has served on the advisory boards of numerous projects in the field, including the Roman de la Rose Digital Library, Europeana Regia, and the Medieval Academy of America’s Digital Initiatives Advisory Board. Stinson has also collaborated with colleagues in the biological sciences to analyze the DNA found in medieval parchment manuscripts. This work has garnered international press coverage in outlets such as the BBC’s The World Today, National Geographic, Science, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Stinson is a devoted teacher and a recipient of the NC State Outstanding Teacher Award. He has helped to develop new curricula and courses in the fields of medieval English literature, history of the book, and digital humanities at NC State. He is a contributor to the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and collaborated on the creation of a history of the book teaching collection in the NC State Department of English.

Responsibilities

Co-Founder and Co-Director, Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA)

Director, Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET)

Co-Director (with Hoyt Duggan and Thorlac Turville-Petre), Piers Plowman Electronic Archive

Series Editor, PPEA Print Series

Associate Director, Advanced Research Consrtium (ARC)

Modern Language Association, Committee on Scholarly Editions, 2014-2018

Editorial Board, Anvil Academic Publishing, 2012-2014

Reviews Editor, Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Culture

Review panelist, National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Collections and Reference program, 2013

Review panelist, National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Humanities Implementation Grant program, 2012

Chair, Medieval Academy of America Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize Committee, 2017

Medieval Academy of America Digital Initiatives Advisory Board, 2010-2017

Chair, Medieval Academy of America Committee on Electronic Resources, 2010-2013

Site Visit Team Member, Council on Library and Information Resources Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Project, 2010-2011

Roman de la Rose Digital Library, Advisory Council, 2008-present

Europeana Regia, Advisory Board, 2010-present

Strategic Advisory Committee, Department of English, North Carolina State University, 2010-present

Co-Convenor, Triangle Medieval Studies Seminar, 2010-present

Medieval Academy of America Committee on Electronic Resources, 2007-10

Research Publications

The Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive.  An online archive comprising transcriptions and  images of all extant manuscript copies of The Siege of Jerusalem accompanied by critical texts and extensive introductory materials.

With Melissa Scheible, Matthew Breen, Benjamin J. Callahan, Rachael Thomas, and Kelly A. Meiklejohn. “The Development of Non-Destructive Sampling Methods of Parchment Skins for Genetic Species Identification.” PLOS ONE 19.3 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299524

“‘Al for some conclusioun’: Trinitarian Structure and the Final Stanza of Chaucer’s Troilus.” Chaucer Review 58.1 (2023): 1-34.

With Simon Hickinbotham, Sarah Fiddyment, and Matthew J. Collins. “How to Get Your Goat: Automated Identification of Species from MALDI-ToF Spectra.” Bioinformatics 36.2 (2020).

With Joel Schneier and Matthew Davis. “BigDIVA and Networked Browsing: A Case for Generous Interfacing and Joyous Searching.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 12.2 (2018).

“Of Dwarves and Dinosaurs: Moving on from mouvance in Digital Editions” in Meeting the Medieval in a Digital World. ARC Humanities Press, 2018: 143-56.

“What is Piers Plowman?” The Routledge Research Companion to Digital Medieval Literature, Routledge, 2017: 82-91.

“(In)completeness in Middle English Literature: The Case of the Cook’s Tale and the Tale of Gamelyn.” Manuscript Studies 1.1 (2016): 115-34.

With James Knowles. “Special Report: The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive on the Web: An Introduction.”   Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2014): 225-38.

“Translating The Canterbury Tales into Contemporary Media” in Approaches to Teaching The Canterbury Tales, Second Edition. Modern Language Association, 2014. 193-95.

“Illumination and Interpretation: The Depiction and Reception of Faus Semblant in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts.” Speculum 87.2 (April 2012): 469-98.

“Counting Sheep: Potential Applications of DNA Analysis to the Study of Medieval Parchmen Production.” Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age II. Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik: Norstedt, 2011. 191-207.

“Makeres of the Mind: Authorial Intention, Editorial Practice, and The Siege of Jerusalem.” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 24 (2010): 39-62.

“Knowledge of the Flesh: Using DNA Analysis to Unlock Bibliographical Secrets of Medieval Parchment.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America. Vol. 103:4 (2009): 435-53.

“Codicological Descriptions in the Digital Age” in Codicology and Palaeography in the Digital Age. Norstedt: Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik: 2009. 35-51.

“The Rise of Printing and Decline of Alliterative Verse.” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 22 (2008):165-97.

“The Romance of the Rose.” The Walters Magazine. Winter 2008: 8.

With G. Sayeed Choudhury. “The Virtual Observatory and the Roman de la Rose: Unexpected Relationships and the Collaborative Imperative.” Cyberinfrastructure & the Liberal Arts, a special issue of Academic Commons. December 2007. (1772 words)

Codicological Descriptions

I have published more than a dozen specially commissioned codicological descriptions of medieval manuscripts online via the Roman de la Rose Digital Library and e-codices: Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland. Each description is based on in-person consultation of the book and research on its origins and provenance. Included in this list are books from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bodleian Library, the Fondation Martin Bodmer, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Lausanne Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire, the Morgan Library, the University of Pennsylvania, the Walters Art Museum, and several private collections.

Presentations

Invited Lecture. “Of Peptides and Scribes: Applying Life Sciences to the Study of Manuscripts.” Manuscript Migration Lab, Duke University, November 2021.

Invited Lecture. “Biocodicology: The Biology of Books.” University of Guelph, February 2021.

Invited Guest. Virtually Everything with Michael Witmore. Folger Shakespeare Library, January 2021.

Invited Lecture. “Envisioning a New Siege of Jerusalem.” Editions and Manuscripts of Middle English Poetry. Loyola University Chicago, October 2019.

“The Potential Biocodicology Holds for the Humanities” (with Bruce Holsinger). “Biocodicology: The Parchment Record and the Biology of the Book.” Folger Institute Scholarly Program, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washingtons D.C., May 2019.

“Scribes and Readers: Textual Communities and The Siege of Jerusalem.” International Piers Plowman Society, University of Miami, April 2019.

“ARC, BigDIVA, and the Future of Research Infrastructures” (with Laura Mandell). Digital Humanities Workshop: From Idea to Sustainabie Project, National Humanities Center, October 2018.

“Old Meets New: Describing and Cataloging Manuscripts in a Digital Age.” Manuscript Cataloging in a Comparative Perspective, Hamburg Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, May 2018.

Invited lecture. “The More a Man Gazes: Roman de la Rose in a Digital Age,” University of Toronto, April 2018.

Invited participant. LVCAS° Workshop, Bodleian Library, Oxford UK, May 2017.

Invited lecture. “Bodies of Evidence: The Genetic Analysis of Medieval Parchment Codices,” Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2017.

“Editing Piers Plowman: Translatio and Transformations.” New Chaucer Society, London, July 2016.

Panelist. Roundtable: What Do We Want Out of Book Reviews (and Book Reviewers)? New Chaucer Society, London, July 2016.

“Ghosts in the Medieval Machine: Artifacts and their Digital Afterlives.” Supporting Humanities Online Research and Education (SHORE) Symposium, Purdue University, May 2016.

Panelist. “Recipe for a Better Peer Review.” 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2016.

Panelist. “Assessment in the Humanities.” National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC, April 2016.

Panelist. “Large-Scale Early Modern Digital Humanities.” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Boston, April 2016.

Morton W. Bloomfield Plenary Lecture. “Of Dwarves and Dinosaurs: Moving on from mouvance in Digital Editions.” Digital Britain: New Approaches to the Early Middle Ages, Harvard University March 2016.

“The Advanced Research Consortium: Federated Resources for the Production and Dissemination of Scholarly Editions.” DiXiT 2: Academia, Cultural Heritage, Society, University of Cologne, March 2016

Panel Organizer (on behalf of the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions). “Editing Unruly Objects.” Modern Language Association, Austin, January 2016.

“Editing the Old is New Again: The Siege of Jerusalem and Piers Plowman Electronic Archives.” Modern Language Association, Austin, January 2016.

“(Im)material Bodies: The Absent Jew and The Siege of Jerusalem,” 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2015.

“Confession, Vengeance, and the Destruction of Jerusalem,” Remembering Jerusalem: Imagination, Memory, and the City,” University of London, November 2014.

“Avenging Christ: The Absent Jew and The Siege of Jerusalem,” New Chaucer Society, Reykjavík, Iceland, July 2014

Panelist. Innovative Interventions in Scholarly Editing: “A View From the Shoulders of Giants: Auctoritas and New Media,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, January 2014

“Gamelyn’s Heirs: (In)completeness and Middle English Literature,” Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age, University of Pennsylvania, November 2013

Presenter. Digital Projects Showcase. Society for the History of Authorship, Reception, and Publishing Annual Conference, University of Pennsylvania, July 2013.

Panelist. Assessing the Medieval Digital Ecosystem. International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2013.

Panelist. Back to the Future: Exploring New Digital Initiatives in Medieval Studies. Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, April 2013.

“New Media and Old Jerusalem.” Northeast Modern Language Association, Tufts University, Boston, March 2013.

Invited Participant. Schloss Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop: Computation and Palaeography – Potentials and Limits. Schloss Dagstuhl Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, Wadern, Germany, September 2012.

“The Ecosystem of the Archive: Scholarly and Public Interaction with Natural History Collections.” Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, Yale University, June 2012.

“Medieval Textuality and Translatio in the Digital Age.” Society for Textual Scholarship, University of Texas at Austin, May 2012.

Panelist. “MESA: Growing a Federation for Medieval Studies.” 47^th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2012.

Invited Speaker. “DNA Analysis and the Study of Medieval Parchment Books.” European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop on Digital Palaeography, Universität Würzburg, Germany. July 2011.

Panelist. “What Every (Digital) Medievalist Should Know.” 46^th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2011.

“DNA Analysis and the Study of Medieval Parchment Books.” Material Cultures 2010, Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh, July 2010.

“Cooperative Digital Projects.” e-codices Workshop, University of Fribourg, June 2010.

“Using Digital Facsimiles in Traditional and Born-Digital Publishing.” Digital Manuscripts Interoperability Workshop (hosted by Stanford University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Paris, January 2010.

Panel moderator. “Legal Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.” Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. University of Pennsylvania, October 2009.

Invited speaker. “Codicological Descriptions in the Digital Age.” Internationale Tagung: Kodikologie und Paläographie im digitalen Zeitalter, University of Munich, July 2009.

“The Next Generation Journal Article: A Use Case of Interactive Publication Using Digital Manuscript Materials.” 44^th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2009

Invited speaker. “Knowledge of the Flesh: Using DNA Analysis to Unlock Bibliographical Secrets of Medieval Parchment.” Annual Meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America (New Scholars Program), New York, January 2009

Invited speaker. “Manuscript Forensics: DNA and the Study of Medieval Parchment.” Council on Library and Information Resources Symposium, Washington, D.C., December 2008

“Across the Gulf of Centuries: Representations of Medieval Translatio in the Age of Print.” Modern Language Association, Chicago, December 2007

Invited speaker. “Counting Sheep: What DNA Can Reveal About Medieval Manuscripts and Texts.” Invited lecture. Rare Book School Lecture Series. University of Virginia, October 2007

“Translatio and Textual Transformation in The Siege of Jerusalem: An Editorial Case Study.” 42^nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2007

“Voices From the Edge: Marginalia and Marginalization in Roman de la Rose Manuscripts.” Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Knoxville, TN, February 2007

Panelist.  Web 2.0 Seminar.  Professional Scholarly Publishing/Association of American Publishers Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., February 2007

“Roman de la Rose Digital Surrogates.”  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Medieval Studies All-Projects Meeting, New York, January 2007

“Everything Old is New Again: The Re-emergence of Medieval Polyvocality in Digital Manuscript Archives.”  Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, Digital Dialogues and Speakers, October 2006

“Translating Medieval Textual Transmission in Scholarly Electronic Editions.”  South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Roanoke, VA, 2004

Funded Research

NEH Collaborative Research program award, Principal Investigator, “Mysterious Manor Court Rolls: Unlocking Agricultural and Health Secrets through the DNA-based Analysis of Parchment Skins,” $250,000. Funds to extract and analyze DNA from manor court rolls and probate itineraries held by the Norfolk Record Office (UK), Harvard Law Library, and Folger Shakespeare Library. May 2025-April 2028.

National Humanities Center Fellowship, to support work on Avenging Christ in Medieval England, 2021-22

NCSU Research and Innovation Seed Funding, co-Principal Investigator, “Medieval Monks Meet Modern Science: Using Genetics to Unlock the Secrets of Medieval Parchment Books and their Makers,” $18,750. This seed funding was to develop new methods to extract, amplify, and analyze the DNA found in medieval parchment manuscripts. 2021-22.

NEH Summer Stipend. “Jerusalem’s Fall and England’s Rise: Josephan History, the Prose Brut, and the Framing of a Medieval English Nation.” Summer 2020.

NCSU Non-Laboratory Scholarship/Research Program Award. $2851. December 2017. Funds to install mirror instance of server hosting Advanced Research Consortium (ARC) catalog.

Thomas W. Ross Fund Publishing Grant, University of North Carolina Press (co-Principal Investigator with Jim Knowles). $3500. Startup funds to create printed editions of Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Publications. September 2017.

Council on Library and Information Resources, Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for Medieval Studies (co-author with Steve Morris, NCSU Libraries), 2016-2018.  $154,800 awarded to North Carolina State University to fund a two-year fellowship that provides a recent Ph.D. with professional development, education, and training opportunities in data curation for the humanities, specifically in sub-disciplines related to Medieval Studies.

CHASS Scholarship and Research Award (co-Principal Investogator with James Knowles), $4000 for work on Piers Plowman Electronic Archive. October 2014.

Council on Library and Information Resources, co-author (with Steve Morris, NCSU Libraries) of proposal that resulted in $154,800 award to North Carolina State University to fund Postdoctoral Fellowship in Data Curation for Medieval Studies. June 2013-May 2015.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, co-Principal Investigator, Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA) Implementation Grant, $150,000. July 2012-June 2015.

NCSU Research and Innovation Seed Funding, Principal Investigator, “Genetic Analysis of Medieval Parchment Manuscripts,” $22,650. January 2012-December 2012.

Council on Library and Information Resources, co-Principal Investigator, “The Ecosystem of the Archive (affiliated with CLIR’s “Observations on Scholarly Engagement with Hidden Special Collections and Archives”), $15,750,  September 2011.

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, co-Principal Investigator, Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA) Planning Grant, $29,499. January-December 2011.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Humanities Fellowship, $75,400. July 2009- June 2010

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Principal Investigator, Use Case for “Digitized Collections of Medieval Manuscripts,” $10,000. December 2008

Council on Library and Information Resources, Emerging Disciplines Grant, $4650. 2008.