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Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Self-Designed Major, Self-Designed Minor

Explore the rich confluence of cultures in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East from the fourth to the 17th centuries, and study the writers, artists, and public figures who fashioned the modern world.

The program allows you to design an interdisciplinary major or minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, drawing on collegewide offerings in three or more fields. As an era when rival religions competed for minds and hearts, states took form, and writers and artists developed vernacular idioms, this period offers a model for contemporary study of the interaction of cultures. Program faculty will advise you on the connections to be made across disciplines and time periods and assist you in building coherent curricula around your individual interests.

Program Highlights

Holy Cross prides itself in an unusually rich faculty researching the medieval and early modern periods. More than 15 faculty members study a period spanning from the fourth to the 17th centuries in Europe, Asia, and the Mediterranean basin, in fields including but not limited to:
  • Art history
  • Classics
  • English
  • History
  • Italian
  • Latin
  • Music
  • Philosophy
  • Religious studies
  • Russian
  • Spanish
The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program seeks to forge links among these disciplines. A distinctive characteristic of medieval and early modern Western thought is the intellectual struggle for the synthesis of knowledge. Many of the disciplinary boundaries that define contemporary academic study today would have been foreign to people living in these periods. The program will encourage you to think across artificial boundaries and to pursue the same synthesis.
students in the chapel
Cocurricular Opportunities
Enrich your formal study of the medieval and renaissance periods with an array of cocurricular offerings.
oxford buildings
Study Abroad
Explore medieval and renaissance culture in a variety of places around the world.
students at laptops
Manuscripts Club
Study medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the Manuscripts, Documents, and Inscriptions Club.