Scott Trudell at the University of Wisconsin, Madison

Scott Trudell is a residential fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Scott Trudell is currently braving the winter in Wisconsin with a residential research fellowship for the academic year. He is affiliated with the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Institute supports 40 to 45 fellows each year, at all ranks, both internal and external. Trudell has a Solmsen Fellowship, which is reserved for scholars working in European studies before 1700, in fields including classics, history, and literature. Each week one of the fellows gives a lecture about their research, followed by questions and a follow-up discussion the next day. At the University, Trudell holds no teaching responsibilities, which allows him to finish his book project on song and meditation in Renaissance England.

Trudell believes that the fellowship has given him exposure to the perspectives of a great variety of other humanities disciplines such as anthropology, history, musicology, philosophy, political science and more.

"I’ve come to appreciate the diversity of research methods in the humanities; often other fellows have a very different sense of what counts as evidence, or will think about the implications of a project entirely differently. This makes it necessary to explain the stakes of one’s research without assuming shared background, while still making clear what is distinctive and valuable about the project—moving quickly from the general to the particular. I’ve learned a lot watching others do this and attempting it myself," said Trudell.

In his own research, Trudell is still learning and discovering. Recently, he has come across Richard Edwards (pictured below), the first master of children in Elizabeth I's ecclesiastical choir to use boy singers as commercial actors. Edwards was also a poet, composer, and songwriter involved in some of the most avant-garde music of the late-sixteenth century.

"What was surprising to me was the graphically sexual and violent way that he describes two boy singers in his play Damon and Pythias. This inspired some further investigation into how boy singers shocked and fascinated audiences during the period," said Trudell.