Interdisciplinary Program in Ancient and Medieval Studies

6,500 years

Through a wide variety of subjects drawn from a number of disciplines, this program provides a curricular framework for exploring topics in ancient and medieval studies which range from the history of ideas and institutions to that of material artifacts, literature, and certain of the original languages. The program spans the 6,500 years between 5000 B.C. and 1500 A.D.

This program's goal is to develop knowledge and understanding of the more distant past both for itself, in its uniqueness, and as an object of specifically modern questions and methods of inquiry. The program has an interest in the structure of institutions and social systems, and in relationships between the social order and learned traditions, values, ideologies, and ideas. Ancient and medieval studies derive a special claim to our interest from the fact that the record is so full and multiform and that much of it is of exceptionally high quality at once in substance and form.

Ancient and Medieval Studies is available as a concentration, a minor, and as an interdisciplinary major within Course 21. Individual programs are to be determined in consultation with Professor William Broadhead, Room E51-186, (617) 258-6668.