Professional indexing, copyediting, and proofreading
of academic, trade nonfiction, fiction, and TTRPG books


Robert Dees
The Power of Peasants

Co-President of the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation, I specialize in scholarly embedded and back-of-book indexing, copy editing, and proofreading in the humanities and social sciences, as well as materials relating to role-playing games and scholarly-adjacent trade non-fiction. I am a member of ISC/SCI, the American Society for Indexing, Editors Canada, and the Editorial Freelancers Association.

I also offer an Index Review and Edit package for authors who have indexed their own books but would like a set of professional eyes on the index before sending it off to the publisher. Cheaper than hiring out for the full index, this package includes evaluation of the index for consistency and the application of best practices to the index.

I am an expert in history, particularly medieval European history, in which I hold a PhD. I was an assistant professor before moving into indexing. My academic knowledge is interdisciplinary, stretching from history into literature, archaeology, anthropology, religious studies, philosophy, and theology. Trained as a medievalist, my subject knowledge covers late antiquity through the early modern period, Iceland to China. I have taught and studied world civilizations and modern history, particularly that of the Middle East. As a research academic, I am familiar with the structure of academic writing, the audience it looks toward, and the needs a scholarly index must serve.

Outside of academia, I am broadly read and have particular familiarity with manuals for writing as craft, trade nonfiction (including the hard sciences and mathematics), gaming books, and travel books.

I do not use generative/predictive AI/LLMs (ChatGPT and its ilk), nor do I subcontract. When you hire me, you get my work.

Interested in a closer look at who I am, including my academic cv and resume? Follow the link.



Dr. Alexander J. B. Hampton
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto

Recent Projects

Cover for the book St Antoninus of Florence

St Antoninus of Florence on Trade, Merchants, and Workers, Jason Aaron Brown

Saint Antoninus of Florence was a Dominican friar and archbishop of Florence from 1446 to 1459. He composed one of the most comprehensive manuals of moral theology, the Summa, which has long been counted among the more copious, influential, and rewarding medieval sources.


She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics, Mary Ellen Curtin

In She Changed the Nation, biographer Mary Ellen Curtin offers a new portrait of Jordan and her journey from segregated Houston, Texas, to Washington, DC, where she made her mark during the Watergate crisis by eloquently calling for the impeachment of President Nixon.

Recognized as one of the greatest orators of modern America, Jordan inspired millions, and Black women became her most ardent supporters. Many assumed Jordan would rise higher and become a US senator, Speaker of the House, or a Supreme Court justice. But illness and disability, along with the obstacles she faced as a Black woman, led to Jordan’s untimely retirement from elected office–though not from public life. Until her death at the age of fifty-nine, Jordan remained engaged with the cause of justice and creating common ground, proving that Black women could lead the country through challenging times.


Fixing the Liturgy: Friars, Sisters, and the Dominican Rite, 1256-1516, Claire Taylor Jones

Jones opens a window into the daily practice of medieval liturgy, uncovering the astounding breadth of knowledge, the deep expertise, and the critical thinking required just to coordinate each day’s worship. Focusing on the Dominican order, Jones shows how changes in medieval piety and ritual legislation disrupted the fine-tuned system that Dominicans instituted in the thirteenth century.

World-historical events, including the Great Western Schism and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, had an impact on the practice of liturgy even in individual communities. Through a set of never-before-studied records from Dominican convents, Jones shows how women’s communities reacted and adapted to historical change and how their surviving sources inform our understanding of the friars’ lives, as well. Tracing the narrative up to the eve of the Protestant Reformation, this study culminates in a multi-media reconstruction of the sounds, sights, and smells of worship in the rightfully famous southern German convent of St. Katherine in Nuremberg.

Blog

Devil Muppets

26 March 2024

Somewhere, long ago, I encountered the theory that delusions are culturally constructed and coded. No one had a Napoleon complex before Bonaparte; no one thought they were Jesus before Christianity had permeated their society; ancient Greek conspiracy-theorists were not convinced that the Truth about little grey men was Out There. That our imaginations are culturally bounded makes good sense to me, but every now and again–as a historian–I wonder what that does to our ability to engage with the cultural imaginations of societies whose touchpoints are less accessible to us.

What prompts my deep thoughts this morning? An author describing a manuscript illustration of demons vexing a set of virgin martyrs (what do you read about over your morning tea?). You have the demonic forms anyone who’s studied the later Middle Ages has come to expect: a dragon that is “half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than a horse” (that’s a contemporary description of the beast, fyi). Then there is the demon who impishly tries to blow out the candle held by the virgin martyr St. Geneviève. According to a modern scholar, this one is “purple and furry, rather like a Muppet.”

I am left imagining the Chilly Down Muppets from Labyrinth, only purple. They’re certainly impish enough.


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