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
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. Admissions take place throughout the year and are reviewed by the MEMS Executive Committee on an ongoing basis.
