The certificate in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (ca. 500 to 1800 AD) is designed to help Ph.D. students acquire an interdisciplinary grounding in their area of expertise. The certificate program organizes activities to help build community among students from different departments and encourages them to develop disciplinary, geographical, and chronological range. We feel strongly that one’s own discipline is more clearly understood when its practices are located among those of other fields.
The MEMS certificate program is a flexible grouping of courses, but one course is required for all students—the MEMS graduate proseminar. This class is team-taught by faculty from different departments who model in the classroom the kinds of interdisciplinary enquiry the certificate program encourages. The proseminar may address various topics of the period: urbanization, courts, the roles of women, the impact of religion, colonialism, encounters between east and west, and nation-building, for example, but each course thinks hard about how to do interdisciplinary work. These courses also will be expected to focus on the distinctive character of premodern cultures and the special research problems and disciplinary challenges they present.
Along with the yearly MEMS proseminar, we offer a continuing prospectus- and dissertation-writing seminar to give graduate students a clear sense of an interdisciplinary community. This seminar will provide its participants an opportunity to share their works-in-progress with peers from a variety of backgrounds and address issues of common interest in research, method, and writing across the disciplines. Credits for the certificate may be acquired in this seminar.
Admission: Any student with a bachelor’s degree who has been admitted to, or is currently enrolled in, a graduate program at the University is eligible to apply for a Graduate Certificate in MEMS. Applicants should have at least an A- average in their graduate course work or (for entering students) in their undergraduate course work and are expected to have reading knowledge of two foreign languages.
Admissions take place throughout the year, and the application process has two steps. First, application is made to the MEMS program. Applications are reviewed by the MEMS Executive Committee on an ongoing basis. Second, once applicants have received a letter of acceptance from the program, they should go to the Rackham website and complete the paperwork for the Dual Degree application. (This will entail getting signatures from the chair of their home department and from the MEMS director.)
Students must submit the following to the MEMS program:
1. A letter outlining his or her reasons for wanting to receive MEMS certification and explaining the rationale of the proposed course of study. The letter should also explain the student’s background in Medieval and/or Early Modern Studies.
2. A current transcript demonstrating at least an A- average and language facility.
3. A letter of approval from the Director of Graduate Studies in the student's home department.
Specific Course Requirements: MEMS is a 15-credit program; up to 9 of the 15 credit hours may include coursework required for the student’s graduate or professional degree. Students will produce a 20-page term paper for the required proseminar; reading for the course will be around 150 pages per week.
Certificate students will be advised by the MEMS director, in consultation with a MEMS faculty associate in the student’s home unit. Students are encouraged to meet with the director at least once per term to assess progress towards the certificate.
Recent MEMS Dissertations:
Laura Ambrose, “Plotting Movement: Representations of Local Travel in Early Modern England, 1600-1660.”
Andrea Boboc, “Justice on Trial: Judicial Abuse and Acculturation in Late Medieval English Literature, 1381-1481.”
Heather Flaherty, “The Place of the Speculum Humanae Salvationis in the Rise of Affective Piety in the Later Middle Ages.”
Sean Roberts, “Cartography between Cultures: Francesco Berlinghieri’s Geographia of 1482.”
Ella-Natalie Rothman, "Between Venice and Istanbul: Trans-Imperial Subjects and Cultural Mediation in the Early Modern Mediterranean."
Marjorie Rubright, "Double Dutch: Approximate Identities in Early Modern English Culture."
Noel Schiller, “The Art of Laughter: Society, Civility, and Viewing Practices in the Netherlands 1600-1640.”
Current Dissertation Projects:
Kris Luce, “Revolutions in Parallel: The Rise and Fall of Drawing within Architectural Design.”
