The Medieval & Renaissance Studies graduate minor offers unparalleled interdisciplinary learning, as you work with professors and peers in departments across the university, along with an extensive breadth of knowledge that comes from studying Medieval and Renaissance periods from different critical perspectives.

Our program is unique in that it actively charts three axes of cultural diversity: that which occurs across geographical boundaries, within disciplinary cultures, and spanning nearly 900 years of chronological distance.

You’ll examine through multiple methodological lenses the relations between the many disparate cultures in Europe, Africa, and Asia from the end of Classical Antiquity to the beginning of the Modern Age. By locating European history alongside the histories of Africa, the Americas, and the Near East, and by casting the European “self” as a temporal “other,” Medieval and Renaissance courses challenge you to develop an alternate, more open and more culturally complex historical place from which to articulate your own contemporary histories.

The program supports numerous graduate students in various participating departments such as English, History and Modern Languages. These students frequently draw on Medieval & Renaissance faculty from other departments as readers and committee members, a practice that increases the interdisciplinary rigor and appeal of our graduate students’ work. As a result of this collaboration and the good work of faculty and students within their departments, our students have presented at national conferences, published in respected academic journals, and continued on to become faculty colleagues at other institutions.