About
The requirements described below are intended only as a guideline. The medieval studies program is in transition, and, in line with other interdisciplinary programs at the University of Texas at Austin, will be reconstituted as a Portfolio program.
Graduate students in medieval studies will apply to and be admitted in individual academic departments. Graduate funding will be based in these departments, and departments will have flexibility in adjusting the requirements outlined below as necessary. Once requirements are met in language proficiency, number of courses, and interdisciplinary knowledges, students will then graduate with a PhD degree in the discipline of their home department (English, History, Spanish and Portuguese, etc), and with Portfolio certification in medieval studies.
From Spring 2004, new collaborative, team-taught, interdisciplinary graduate seminars will also begin. These seminars are of two kinds. To bring medieval studies into an ever more complex, interdependent, and internationalized twenty-first century, we will teach an interconnected medieval world — a "global" Middle Ages—and the interrelationship of culture, ideas, technologies, religions, and movements across periods of time and geography. To teach the interconnected relationship of culture in its many forms—literature, music, art, cartography, politics, law, etc—team-taught seminars across disciplines will also be introduced in thematically organized units.
One goal of the new seminars is to inculcate practices of thinking across periods, cultures, territories, and disciplines, even as medieval studies at the University of Texas continues to emphasize the importance of intensive training in disciplinary knowledges and practices. Course descriptions and information on public lectures and visiting faculty associated with the new seminars will be posted on this website.
Facilities for Graduate Work
The collections of the General Libraries, including the Perry-Castaneda Library and the branch libraries in architecture, classics, and fine arts, provide strong support for medieval studies through their journals, series, monographs, facsimile editions of manuscripts, microforms, slides, recordings, and musical scores. Important digital resources, including the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English; Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance; the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies; and hundreds of electronic journals and books in medieval studies are accessible through UT Library Online. In addition, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center has a significant collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, both sacred and secular.
