Visiting Fellows
Stefan Vander Elst is Associate Professor of English at the University of San Diego, and Director of USD’s Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Professor Vander Elst’s time as a Visiting Fellow at the DHC is focused on the completion of his book, The Knight, The Cross, and the Song: Chivalric Literature and Crusade Propaganda, Twelfth–Fourteenth Centuries. This book will be the first work to discuss systematically the influence of secular literary forms on Crusade propaganda and ideology in the Middle Ages. Though most contemporary scholarship regards the Crusade as primarily a religious concern, Professor Vander Elst argues that from the very beginning of the Crusades both clerical and lay propaganda used chivalric literature to appeal to issues beyond religious devotion as parallel motivations for the Crusades, including imagined territorial rights, national exceptionalism, duty to family, and—due to the influence and increasing popularity of chivalric romance among knights—notions of love and “secular adventure in the service of women.”
As an actor in the Théâtre du Soleil, Georges Bigot performed under the direction of Ariane Mnouchkine from 1981 to 1992, notably in Richard II and Henry IV by William Shakespeare. In 1986, he received the National Critics Syndicate’s award for best actor for his role of King Norodom Sihanouk. A frequent collaborator with Helene Cixous and Tim Robbins, Bigot is known not only as an acclaimed actor, but as a dancer, director, and producer. Bigot has directed several theater stages around the world (USA, Brazil, Chile, Singapore, Mali, Cambodia, France, etc.) and has taught at the University of Bordeaux III from 1993 to 2001 where he federated the actors who later formed Le Petit Theatre de Pain. During his tenure as a Visiting International Fellow at the DHC, Bigot will be conducting a mask-making workshop and holding open rehearsals, collaborating with DePaul, The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, and Theatre Y in an upcoming stage production.