Course description
Programme description
- Unrivalled location, gives students access to major libraries, institutes and societies for medievalists.
- Flexible combination of core skills and training modules.
- Unique range of specialist options, allowing interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study.
The programme comprises four modules:
Module A (core courses to the value of 1.0 - compulsory for all students); (i) Making the Middle Ages: an Advanced Introduction to Medieval Studies (0.5); and (ii) one of the following (0.5): Palaeography I; Medieval Language; Computing for Medievalists.
Module B comprises either a course or courses listed in A(ii) not already taken as part of Module A, up to a total of 1.0. Alternatively, a course chosen from the list of interdisciplinary and single-subject specialist options available for this MA (1.0).
Module C comprises a course chosen from the list of interdisciplinary and single subject specialist options available for this MA (1.0).
Module D: Dissertation (1.0.)
Options available in 2007-8: Arabic Philosophy; The Arthurian Tradition in Literature & History; Books & Bodies; Byzantium & the West, A.D.843-1002; Byzantine Hagiography; Chivalric Romance in Germany; Christine de Pizan; Comparing Cultures: Muslim Spain in the European Imagination; England & the Continent in the 9th century; Three Faces of Women in the Galician-Portuguese Lyric; The Foundations & Records of English Royal Government; The History of Medieval Women; Gender & Middle English Literature; Germanic Philology; Magna Carta & Medieval Kingship; Medieval Latin Literature; Medieval Occitan narrative; Representing Medieval London.
Programme format and assessment
Taught core and optional modules assessed by coursework and/or examination plus a compulsory dissertation which accounts for 25 per cent of the total marks. The core modules are assessed by submitted essays or projects, and the specialist modules by written examination and/or essays. Each module counts for 25 per cent of the final marks. In addition, students present a dissertation on an agreed topic of not more than 10,000 words including quotations and footnotes but excluding bibliography, carrying 25 per cent of the final marks. Written papers are taken in the May examination period, essays are normally submitted in early May and the dissertation by 15 September.
Programme modules for MA Medieval Studies
Making the Middle Ages (Core Module)
This interdisciplinary module introduces you to a selected, but nonetheless broad range of the intellectual issues, concerns and categories that have motivated and structured the study of the Middle Ages. You will explore the parameters of medieval studies as a discipline, learn how to critique its various historicist, theoretical and ideological postulates, and appreciate its significance to the humanities more generally. In addition, the module will teach you to set your particular research interests in a broader disciplinary context, and to clarify its broader interdisciplinary potential.
Manuscript Materials
A study of English vernacular manuscripts of the medieval period, with special attention given to the history and development of script. The module is principally concerned with English vernacular manuscripts up to 1525. The teaching incorporates frequent tasks, for example: sample transcriptions; codicological descriptive exercises; and work on the history of script.
Duration
One year FT, two years PT, September to September.
