Stand-up Historian

History professor Charles Wood received the academic equivalent of a knighthood at the 33rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, when his former Dartmouth and Harvard students, now medievalists, honored him with a symposium devoted to "History in the Comic Mode."

What does Wood have to do with history in the comic mode? Indeed what does the term mean? "I'm not totally sure," Wood says. But maybe he's just playing the jester. "I myself have never thought that I was especially a humorist, but I guess that even the slightest intimations of humor must stand out in an academic world that tends to take its writings so very seriously. Who else, for example, would have wondered in print whether the Virgin Mary had a normal menstrual cycle—and then published his findings in a journal called Speculum (that's the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, not of the ob/gyn people)?"

"Charlie has quite a reputation among us scholarly types for a penetrating and dry wit. In his classes he never omits the odd anecdote good for a laugh," says symposium participant and Clemson University professor Barton Palmer '68.

The term "history in the comic mode" was actually coined by medievalist Carolyn Walker Bynum, one of Wood's former Harvard students (he taught there before moving to Dartmouth in 1964) to describe the kind of historical analysis Wood does. According to symposium organizer Bonnie Wheeler, another of Wood's Crimson students, the term makes the point that, "all stories are invented, all endings are contrived, and all scholarship is provisional. If the comic mode has stories, some of which have happy endings, it is because the historian provides the story and the ending."

The term clearly has Wood written all over it. "It refers to his wry, impish style, in person and publication," says Jonathan Good '94. "He has the rare ability to make the Middle Ages come alive."

Which is why there are enough of his former students—including Kathryn Miller '77, Laura Ackerman Smoller '81, and Andrew Lewis '65—to fill a symposium.

Wood is Witty and wise.