The topic, "Mobs," has resonance in a remarkable number of disciplines, as well as providing a link between the past and the present. It is still clearly of much importance today, therefore, in its widest sense, from antiquity to the writings of Elias Canetti, "Mobs" provides a context for the essays presented in this volume all of which speak to the potentially complex nature of mobs, their defining characteristics, and what the various outcomes of mobs, historical as well as those of the very recent past, have encompassed. This volume brings clarity, pungency, and understanding to a topic that brings into the discussion of disciplines such as medieval studies, literature, musicology, theology and philosophy, historical studies, including the early university, and theatre. Contributors are (in order within the volume): Leonard M. Koff, Ben Schomakers, Bernard S. Bachrach, Nancy van Deusen, Paul W. Knoll, Charlotte Bauer, Andrew Galloway, Robert W. Hanning, Terence Tunberg, Peter Howard, Cornelia Oefelein, Teofilo Ruiz, Richard Taruskin, David B. Rosen, Aino Paasonen and Richard Sogliuzzo. Nancy van Deusen, holds a Ph.D. in Musicology, Indiana University, Bloomington; is currently Professor of Musicology, Benezet Professor of the Humanities, Claremont Graduate University, and is Director of the Claremont Consortium in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Claremont Colleges and Graduate University. She has taught widely at Indiana University, the University of Basel, Switzerland, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Central European University, Budapest, and within the California State University system. Leonard Michael Koff holds a B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an associate of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA, where he has taught and developed on campus and online courses, including Comparative Literature s several-part humanities sequence: Western literature from antiquity to the 20th century and literature from Latin America, Africa, and Asia.