{"id":9240,"date":"2026-01-27T22:25:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/?p=9240"},"modified":"2026-01-27T22:25:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T22:25:50","slug":"troy-university-professor-to-spend-six-months-in-uganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/2026\/01\/27\/troy-university-professor-to-spend-six-months-in-uganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Troy University professor to spend six months in Uganda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>TROY, Ala. (<a href=\"http:\/\/today.troy.edu\/TROJANVISION\">TROJANVISION<\/a>) \u2014  A Troy University literature professor is on a six month-long trip to Uganda,\u00a0attempting\u00a0to record the stories that until now, have only been spoken.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Richard Scott Nokes has built his career around Medieval, European&nbsp;literature.&nbsp;Now,&nbsp;curiosity stretching beyond that one topic&nbsp;has caused&nbsp;him to ask&nbsp;one very big&nbsp;question.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve&nbsp;always been interested in&nbsp;what we call&nbsp;global&nbsp;medievalism,&nbsp;but you know sometimes we&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;know once we get out of Europe, what&nbsp;was going on in the rest of the world,&#8221; Nokes said. &#8220;And when I started looking for information on sub-Saharan Africa, there was almost nothing.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then,&nbsp;a comment on a paper from&nbsp;grad&nbsp;school&nbsp;urged&nbsp;Nokes&nbsp;to get curious about the unknown.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/2025\/11\/13\/students-bring-medieval-dishes-from-the-page-to-the-plate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>DELICIOUS DETAILS: Students bring medieval dishes from the page to the plate<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhen I was a grad student, my first paper that I ever gave an academic conference, I sent to have it published and of all the different reviewers, one of them said \u2018why didn\u2019t he address x issue?\u2019 and the reason I didn\u2019t address x issue was&nbsp;because I didn\u2019t know the answer because no one knew the answer,&#8221; Nokes said. &#8220;And one thing I learned&nbsp;was:&nbsp;when you start researching something that no one knows about,&nbsp;you\u2019re&nbsp;going to find something. It might not be what you thought you were going to find, but&nbsp;you\u2019re&nbsp;going to find something.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s&nbsp;because of that&nbsp;lack of knowledge&nbsp;surrounding&nbsp;medieval era sub-Saharan Africa,&nbsp;that&nbsp;Nokes&nbsp;is now in&nbsp;Uganda, learning about and recording&nbsp;stories&nbsp;that&nbsp;have&nbsp;been passed down by generations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI thought they might have some remnants of what came before in the oral tradition so I came&nbsp;here with a lot of audio and video recording equipment and things like that to collect their stories and to see what we can find,&#8221; Nokes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has now been a few weeks since\u00a0he\u00a0arrived\u00a0in Uganda, but his research has not began due to an election and an internet outage. He is not beginning his project and will be\u00a0there for another six months.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nokes was able to travel to Uganda because he was awarded the Fulbright grant, a merit-rewarded federal program funding academic study or research in other countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TROY, Ala. (TROJANVISION) \u2014 A Troy University literature professor is on a six month-long trip to Uganda,\u00a0attempting\u00a0to record the stories that until now, have only been spoken.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Richard Scott Nokes has built his career around Medieval, European&nbsp;literature.&nbsp;Now,&nbsp;curiosity stretching beyond that one topic&nbsp;has caused&nbsp;him to ask&nbsp;one very big&nbsp;question.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve&nbsp;always been interested in&nbsp;what we call&nbsp;global&nbsp;medievalism,&nbsp;but you&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"a-button\" href=\"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/2026\/01\/27\/troy-university-professor-to-spend-six-months-in-uganda\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":9254,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1127],"tags":[2783,2781,45,2782],"topics":[17],"class_list":["post-9240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news","tag-fulbright-grant","tag-richard-scott-nokes","tag-troy-university","tag-troy-university-uganda","topics-troy-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9253,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9240\/revisions\/9253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9240"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.troy.edu\/trojanvision\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=9240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}