Welcome to Medieval and Early Modern Studies.
The MEMS program organizes the University’s extraordinarily rich resources in medieval and early modern history, history of art and architecture, archaeology, history, literature, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, religious studies, music, and the history of science and technology into an interdisciplinary and often collaborative community where we can share work, information, and interests.
MEMS offers graduate students a number of opportunities: a Graduate Certificate Program, funding for travel and research, ongoing colloquia and interdisciplinary workshops, the MEMS lecture series, and several conferences each year. Graduate students with MEMS interests are always welcome to participate in our various programs, and we make a point to arrange opportunities for conversation and intellectual exchange between our graduate students and visiting scholars. Since MEMS is a voluntary affiliation, you need not be formally admitted to the Graduate Certificate Program to participate in our events. Your interest is the only requirement! To get on our mailing list, receive announcements, and keep up with current happenings, contact MEMS-staff@umich.edu.
The Certificate Program
The Certificate in Medieval and Early Modern Studies offers a formal-yet-flexible way to highlight the interdisciplinary training you will receive in MEMS. For more information on the requirements and how to apply, click here.
MEMS Proseminar
The MEMS Proseminar is required for the Graduate Certificate Program but is open to both Certificate students and other interested upper-level students. It is a team-taught comparative and/or interdisciplinary course that brings together faculty and students from a wide array of our constituent areas and fosters intellectual breadth and community. For more information on the Proseminar, click here.
MEMS 898: Interdisciplinary Dissertation Colloquium
MEMS 898 is open to both advanced Certificate students and other interested upper-level students.Whereas the MEMS proseminar is usually our students’ first experience in creating an interdisciplinary intellectual community, MEMS 898 offers a similar model of interdisciplinary work for students at the dissertation-writing stage. The Dissertation Colloquium provides advanced students in MEMS an opportunity to present their work to one another in a seminar that brings together doctoral candidates from potentially all the MEMS disciplines. The work one presents may be dissertation chapters (or parts thereof), conference papers, or scholarly articles to be submitted for publication. In addition to reading and responding to one another’s work, the seminar will also consider methodological and disciplinary issues of common interest to members of the seminar. MEMS 898 counts toward the requirements of the Certificate in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, but you do not need to be admitted to the Certificate Program to take the course. The Dissertation Colloquium may be repeated for up to six credits. This is the only MEMS colloquium you can also take for graduate course credit.
Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops
Since 2003 Rackham School of Graduate Studies has sponsored a number of interdisciplinary workshops for graduate students and faculty. These groups are self-organized by the participants and meet regularly throughout the academic year. They are designed to help advanced students form working groups that support the dissertation-writing process, as well as encouraging exchange and collaboration among students and faculty who share intellectual interests but do not have a readily available common forum. MEMS currently works with the Forum on Research in Medieval Studies (FoRMS), the Manuscript Studies Interest Group, and the Premodern Colloquium (PMC), to name but a few. For more information about these and other Rackham Workshops and MEMS-related groups, click here.
Research Support
MEMS is committed to supporting your research. Below is a sample of some of our frequently used opportunities, but for a full list of funding sources specific to medieval and early modern work along with application guidelines, click here.
The Newberry Consortium
MEMS is a member of the Newberry Consortium, an important source of archival materials and programming for MEMS graduate students. Through our affiliation, students and faculty alike have access to the programs of both the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. In addition, both students and faculty of the U-M Ann Arbor campus may apply for funds to attend seminars or lectures, or to do research at these libraries. For more information about funding, click here.
MEMS Summer Travel/Research Grants
MEMS also has summer funding available on a competitive basis through Summer Travel/Research Grants. We are able to offer these grants due to the generous gifts the program receives, and also thanks to support from the Rackham School of Graduate Studies. For more information about funding, click here.
Other Resources
ScholarSpace is a community-driven learning space built to support initiatives that bridge disciplines, build networks, and discover new contexts for scholarship. To meet these goals, ScholarSpace is designed to enable creation, collaboration, and consultation, flexibly supporting independent use, group use, and course-integrated use, with a focus on information design, digital scholarship, and digital pedagogy.
ScholarSpace offers consultation services, workshops, and course-integrated instruction to help faculty, students, and staff develop digital literacy and design skills. Student and staff consultants partner with scholars across disciplines to explore the application of technologies to their learning and research. The space is designed to support multiple simultaneous uses of collaboration space and technology. Independent use of the technology and space is encouraged.
