June 17, 2009
English professor retiring from UWSP
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point English Professor James Stokes has spent so much of his career
researching archives in England that he jokes the grey in his hair is actually dust from ancient
documents.
What he actually gained from those hours of research is a renowned expertise in early English drama, an
esteemed reputation as scholar and several published volumes for the Records of Early English Drama
(REED) project, in which instances of theatre and dramatic activity in England up to 1642 are collected
for reference.
Now, after 28 years of teaching at UWSP, Stokes is retiring from the classroom to devote more of his time
to REED research. Through the University of Toronto Press, he completed two volumes on the theatrical
records of Somerset, England, in 1996, another two volumes of records on Lincolnshire will be published
this year and a third set of volumes will focus on East Anglia.
Stokes’ love of historic research began while he was a doctoral student at Washington State University after
earning master’s and bachelor’s degrees in writing and English at San Francisco State University.
“I realized I loved the documents as much as I loved the literature,” he said. “They spoke to me. I woke
up one day and I was a historian.”
Researching early English drama has taught Stokes about the lives of medieval people, their language, music,
social behavior and culture. “You never know what you are going to find,” he says. “My job is to tell the
story the records hold. The fun part is bringing them to life for people.”
Over the years, Stokes has shared his work as a UW System Fellow and Honorary Fellow at the UW-Madison
Institute for Research in the Humanities and at medieval history conferences in England and across the
United States. He won a H.F. Guggenheim Foundation Grant, the UWSP University Scholar Award and UWSP’s
Academy of Letters and Science Distinguished Achievement Award. He was named a Eugene Katz Distinguished
Faculty Member at UWSP in 1999.
“None of my accomplishments would have been possible without the support of UWSP and the UW System,”
he said. “I’ve been lucky to be affiliated with a great institution.”
Stokes also regularly shares his passion for “literary archeology” with his students and over the last year
he began teaching palaeography, the study of ancient handwriting. His students have really enjoyed reading
the ancient documents he brings to class.
“The single greatest thing is when a student catches fire and they realize that they want to do that and
could do that,” he said. “Then they are on their way, doing something they never thought they could do.
They are inspired to do what I’ve done, and that’s a great thing for a teacher.”
While at UWSP, Stokes led a semester abroad to England and led the summer Theatre in London trips every
other year. He created a Humanities Forum program for faculty to present their own research, and with his
wife, Bobbie, director of UWSP’s Tutoring Learning Center, created the English Department journal “Issues
in Writing.” He also served as assistant dean of Graduate Studies, served on departmental committees and
enjoyed assisting colleagues with research and grant writing.
Stokes shared that some of the most dramatic events of his life occurred outside of academia. While serving
on the U.S. Ticonderoga while in the U.S. Navy in the early 60s, he helped load the first rockets used in
the Vietnam War. He also was filmed by CBS Reports while leading tours of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and
attended San Francisco State University and lived near the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during the height
of the “Summer of Love” in 1969.
“With the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobbie Kennedy and all that was happening, it seemed
like the end of the world,” he remembered.
In addition to continuing his drama research with further trips to England, Stokes plans to spend his
retirement completing a book of his poetry, write scholarly articles, travel and “try to find more balance,”
he says.
He and Bobbie have two grown daughters, one in Stevens Point and another in Minneapolis.
