The secondary field in Medieval Studies examines the Middle Ages from many different angles and through the eyes of many different disciplines, drawing on the wealth of medieval teaching and scholarship at Harvard.
Administrative Director: Sean Gilsdorf
Gateway Courses
Spring 2024
HIST-LIT 10AB: Introduction to the Medieval World
Sean Gilsdorf and Brian FitzGerald
This course provides a journey through the cultures, peoples, objects, and ideas of the millennium commonly described as "medieval", extending from the reorganization of the Roman world in the fourth century to the transformations of the Mediterranean world order in the fifteenth. While historians often emphasize the divisions and dislocations of this era, there also were important continuities and similarities between the societies around, and on either side of, the Mediterranean Sea. The first week of the course will offer a very brisk introduction to the broad political and religious history of Europe and the Mediterranean world from 400 to 1500, while the rest of the semester will be something of a medieval "tasting menu"—a chance for you to become familiar with a variety of important phenomena, ideas, and objects, and to develop your palate in new and unfamiliar ways. We will travel virtually through a series of medieval spaces and places—houses of worship, homes, palaces, schools, marketplaces, and the open road—exploring medieval books and objects in Harvard’s collections as well as texts ranging from a Christian retelling of the Buddha’s life, to an Arab gentleman’s account of the Vikings, to twelfth-century tales of fairies and werewolves.