Minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Description

The Undergraduate Minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies provides students with a broad, humanities-based approach to the rich and fascinating cultures that flourished from around 500CE to 1800CE globally. This challenging, interdisciplinary minor cuts across departments and disciplines and encourages students to discover connections among diverse aspects of medieval and early modern culture. Currently there are twelve departments and over one hundred and fifty departmental offerings from among which students may create their minors — an amazingly rich pool of resources!

Advising

The advising of minors will be conducted by members of the MEMS faculty. Students will work with the MEMS minor supervisor (Professor Brett Whalen, History, bwhalen@email.unc.edu) to select an advisor whose interests generally match their own. The advisors for the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Minor interview and correspond with students individually at an initial stage, help them formulate their minor curriculum, and then track their progress and needs until graduation. The most important role of the advisor is to work out a coherent theme and scheme of courses to be taken for the minor in conference with each student. The course selection is meant to represent a definable facet of medieval and/or early modern culture that can be seen from different disciplinary perspectives. A work sheet is used to set out the structure of each student’s minor and is kept on file in the MEMS office. The advisor adds names of new minors to the listserv for the Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, so that they are apprised of receptions, lectures, brown bag lunches, and films and other events sponsored by MEMS. Approval by the advisor of each student’s minor curriculum is required by the College of Arts and Sciences before credit will be given and the minor entered on the student’s transcript at graduation. Advising is crucial in helping the student work out a coherent and interdisciplinary group of courses.

Coursework

Five courses are taken for the minor. These courses must be distributed over three departments. One of these courses is a core course, and at least one is at the advanced, 300-level. There are currently nine core courses:

ART 264: Medieval Art in Western Europe

ART 154: Intro to Art & Architecture of the Islamic Lands

ASIA 135: South Asian History to 1750

CMPL 120: Literary Traditions I

ENGL 120: British Literature (Chaucer to Pope)

HIST 107: Introduction to Medieval History

HIST 158: History of Early Modern Europe

MUSC 251: History of Western Music to 1650

RELI 180: Introduction to Islamic Civilization

These core courses are intended to provide an overview of medieval or early modern culture in that discipline and to provide a foundation for broader interdisciplinary study. Substitutions are permitted as student and advisor work out the theme and rationale for each individual curriculum. Additional advising comes in conjunction with the student’s choice of a core course, as he or she works with the professor in charge of the core course to further develop a strategy for a meaningful integration of the minor into the rest of the student’s curriculum or career plans. Out of the five classes, the student can take two at the 100 level, provided they are not from the same department. Otherwise, the remaining classes must be at the 200 level or above, and at least one class must be at the 300 level or above.

Click here to see a list of possible courses that might fulfill the MEMS Minor requirements.

Click here to download the MEMS Minor requirements worksheet.