Medieval and Renaissance Studies

专业详情

The Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies promotes the interdisciplinary study of the twelve-hundred-year period from 500 to 1700 that definitively shaped the civilizations of Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas of the New World. We have inherited an amazing legacy from this era that we can hardly imagine living without today: for example, the heliocentric universe; theological concepts, religious practices, and ethical values of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; the development of English and other modern languages; the printed book and widespread literacy; the structures of capitalist market economies; the basic foundations of our legal systems; global exploration and contact between European cultures and native cultures of the Americas; parliamentary government and the nation-state; ideals of chivalric honor, romantic love, and consensual marriage; artistic masterpieces that we continue to cherish, such as the works of Dante, Chaucer, the Arthurian legends, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Rembrandt; even the very universities in which we research and teach all these subjects.

While we can see a great deal of ourselves in the Medieval and Renaissance past, we also observe so much that is not at all like ourselves, that is strange, alien, or mysterious. Stereotypes of religious fanaticism, ignorant superstition, violent action, and abject material existence pervade forms of popular culture that fascinate us. Medieval and Renaissance Studies is all about exploring this varied pattern of likeness and difference, continuity and break. This program gives students the opportunity to study Medieval and Renaissance worlds from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, employing a range of interpretive strategies and methodologies. What we continue to value, what we reject, and the very way we go about telling our stories about these long-standing traditions or unsettling relics from the past shape who we are now.