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Medieval
Studies is not a department but an autonomous interdisciplinary
program, or, as some of us like to call it, a conspiracy,
or coniuratio of the same kind that gave origin
to the medieval communes. It has a budget for graduate
student fellowships and an account for indispensable administrative
expenses but no budget for faculty. It derives its strength
from the enthusiasm of teachers who volunteer overtime
services and of students who accept taxing work.
The faculty is
drawn from many relevant humanities departments -- Classics,
Comparative
Literature, English,
French,
German,
History,
History
of Art, Italian, Music, Near
Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Philosophy,
Religious
Studies, Slavic
Languages and Literatures, and Spanish
and Portuguese -- and of the Divinity
School, the Beinecke
Library, and the Yale
Institute of Sacred Music. There are some forty
faculty members at Yale who work on the various cultures
of the Middle Ages (Faculty).
They form one of the largest assemblies of specialized
medievalists in any university of the United States.
Students have access to all of these faculty and to
the courses, both graduate and undergraduate, that they
offer each term. In addition, the Program offers each
term a special interdisciplinary seminar in Medieval
Studies, the topic of which varies from term to term.
The
program sponsors lectures, colloquia, and special events
throughout the academic year. The Yale Lectures in
Medieval Studies bring truly outstanding medievalists
to campus. The weekly Medieval Lunch Colloquium
provides a low-key atmosphere in which graduate students
and faculty discuss work in progress over college dining
hall lunch fare. We hosted the Southern New England
Graduate Student Medieval Studies Conference in 2005.
We will host Medieval Spring: A Yale Graduate School
Alumni Conference in 2006, and the annual meeting of
the Medieval Academy of North America in 2010.
The
Medieval studies program began at Yale in 1962. The
initiative came from the eminent historian Robert S.
Lopez, who for many years served as chair. Yale's Medieval
Studies Program was the third of its kind to be founded in North America.
At first, Medieval Studies was an M.A. program to be
followed by enrollment in a regular program for the
Ph.D. degree. It became a Ph.D. program in 1965. An
M.Phil. program was added in 1999, in which graduate
students in other departments are given funding for
an extra year of interdisciplinary course work in medieval
culture.
Next:
Graduate Programs
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