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New Member: Carol Symes, Department of History, Harvard University I am currently traveling in France, collecting materials for a dissertation on theatre and public spectacle in the town of Arras during the thirteenth century. Under the rubric of *theatre* I include not only the first extra-ecclesiastical vernacular plays produced in Europe (Jean Bodel's _Jeu de saint-Nicolas_, the _Courtois d'Arras_ , and Adam de la Halle's oeuvre) but other types of performance which provide a context for these plays and may help to explain the dramatic precocity of this region, which had (I will argue) a kind of community theatre two hundred years before anything like it can be documented in England. I'm looking at what I've been calling the "civic liturgies" of the town: the processions, tournaments, disputes, and displays that were played out in public spaces. This project grows out of earlier research in hagiography while at Oxford and is influenced by my experience as a professional actress and - more recently - as a director specializing in medieval and early modern theatre. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%