Overview
The Core module is designed to introduce students to at least one new discipline and progressively, to interdisciplinary research and its methodologies, as well as to the practicalities, challenges and pleasures of postgraduate level independent research. It will also provide training in producing academic posters and presentation techniques.
The Core Course is team taught and runs through Semester One from weeks 1-11 with a Poster session at the end of the semester in Week 11. The teaching is divided into two units, and students choose from one option in each. Teaching is delivered in 2-hour seminars for which you are expected to read, discuss and sometimes present your findings to tutors and peers.
An Introduction to Approaches to an Interdisciplinary Methodology will introduce you to a variety of topics in medieval studies, but its emphasis lies less on content per se and more on research methodologies: the technical knowledge and interpretive approaches characteristic of the disciplines that make up the Centre for Medieval Studies, as well as their eventual interdisciplinary combination. The module begins with single disciplines, and then moves into interdisciplinary work, presented through themed units that explore the possibilities - and sometimes the challenges - of bringing together the methodologies employed in archaeology, art history, history and literature in interdisciplinary research.
Module Structure
Lecture (Week 1) - "An introduction to Interdisciplinarity" - Sethina Watson
The module is then split into two units:
Unit 1: Disciplinary Methodologies (Weeks 2-4)
| Using Archaeology |
Aleks McClain |
| Introduction to History of Art |
Jeanne Nuechterlein and Tim Ayers |
| Reading Published Medieval Texts |
Lucy Sackville and Christine Williamson |
Training session (Week 5) - "Preparing an academic poster" - Sethina Watson
Unit 2 Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Weeks 6-8
| Saints, Stories & Stained Glass |
Christine Williamson & Katharine Harrison |
| Global Middle Ages |
Elizabeth Tyler, Stephanie Wynne-Jones & Dilnoza Duturaeva |
Unit 1 (three seminars, wks 2-4) is designed to introduce students to basic skills in a discipline that is new to them. The focus for these three weeks will be on the methodologies that apply to a particular discipline or type of material: how archaeologists work with people, places and objects; how art historians work with visual material; how texts are interpreted by historians and literary scholars. We recommend that students choose a subject in which they do not already have extensive experience.
Unit 2 (three seminars, wks 6-8) focuses on an integrated examination of particular topics or themes. Seminars are taught by a pair of staff from different disciplines, who will each teach first individually and then in tandem for a final interdisciplinary seminar. The purpose of this unit is to explore how two or more different disciplines might each approach a particular topic, and then what happens when these disciplinary perspectives are brought together.
There will also be an introductory lecture in Week 1, and a session on preparing and presenting an academic poster in Week 5, facilitated by the Chair of the Board of Studies. This will allow the seminar group to think about how to identify and develop a suitable topic within the themed unit that can be used to generate a poster for the poster presentation session in Week 11.
Assessment
Assessment for this module will be pass/fail, by means of the poster presentation in Week 11. Research posters combine images, graphics and text to communicate research findings/ideas in a compact but effective manner. Poster presentations are becoming increasingly common at conferences in the humanities as well as the sciences, so this is a useful skill to begin to learn, as well as an excellent means of demonstrating, by the end of the core module, your understanding of how interdisciplinary approaches might be used in researching medieval material.
Within each themed Unit 2, you will be divided into small groups, and each group will be asked to develop a conference-style poster taking an interdisciplinary approach to a set topic, which you will present to the full group in week 11. Possible topics may emerge during discussion with tutors or colleagues on the course, and the poster planning session in Week 5 will provide a useful opportunity to think about audience, design and content.
Mini module details
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Dr Sethina Watson
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LECTURE: “An introduction to Interdisciplinarity” (Week 1)
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SINGLE DISCIPLINE METHODOLOGIES (Weeks 2-4)
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1.1
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Using Archaeology
Dr Aleks McClain
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This mini-module will introduce students to the research questions and methods of investigation brought to bear on artefacts (week 2), buildings (week 3) and landscapes (week 4). Concepts of dating, style, and typology will be considered, along with sources of evidence and methods of analysis and interpretation.
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1.2
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Introduction to History of Art
Prof Jeanne Nuechterlein &
Prof Tim Ayers
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The purpose of this series of seminars is to introduce students who have no prior knowledge of medieval art history to some of the problems, methods and possibilities in the study of medieval works of art. The sessions will focus on small groups of artworks and a selection of art-historical literature addressing the early, high and late medieval periods to try to familiarise students as rapidly as possible with the physicality of the objects, as well as the academic problems they raise.
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1.3
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Reading Published Medieval Texts
Dr Lucy Sackville &
Dr Christine Williamson
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These seminars will teach students critical skills in the reading of printed primary sources. It will introduce the modern reader to key methodologies and concepts such as genre, register, provenance and audience; and to the nature of historical archives and the kinds of material they contain. In particular students will be introduced to the fraught debate concerning ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in texts that are diversely categorized as pragmatic and inventive. Please note, this mini-module is designed for those students with little or no exposure to the History or Literature disciplines.
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Dr Sethina Watson
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TRAINING SESSION: “How to do Effective Poster Presentations” (Week 5)
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INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGIES (Weeks 6-8)
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2.1
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Saints, Stories & Stained Glass
Dr Christine Williamson &
Dr Katharine Harrison
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Saints’ cults formed an integral part of the fabric of medieval life throughout Western Europe from the lowest social strata to the palaces of royalty. This mini module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to one facet of the cult of saints: hagiography (or saints’ lives). Whilst saints’ shrines provided a physical focal point where the faithful could hope to access divine aid, ecclesiastical centres also spent a great deal of effort compiling narratives about the lives and miracles of their saints. Whilst an increase in pilgrim numbers was always a desirable outcome, hagiography was a remarkably versatile genre (both in its literary and pictorial forms), offering ecclesiastical creators not only an opportunity to promote their own local saint, but also to address a wide range of agendas from contemporary social concerns to theological debates and even national politics.
In recent years, scholars have become increasingly interested in how hagiographical accounts of individual saints could be repeatedly retold and reinvented over time to reflect the ever-changing needs of different audiences and evolving communities. This mini-module will bring together the disciplines of art history and literature to explore these processes as we investigate three very different northern saints: the mighty St Cuthbert of Durham, the (potentially) murdered St William of York and the myroblyte (oil exuding) hermit St Robert of Knaresborough.
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2.2
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Global Middle Ages: Ways of Knowing
Prof Elizabeth Tyler, Prof Stephanie Wynne-Jones & Dr Dilnoza Duturaeva
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This mini-module takes an interdisciplinary approach – crossing Archaeology, History and Literature - to the theory and practice of the ‘Global Middle Ages’. The ‘Global Middle Ages’ challenges the Eurocentric formations of academic disciplines to think about the Middle Ages beyond a Western framework. We will think about the period 500-1500 on an Afro-Eurasian scale, not abandoning Europe, but putting it in its place as a small and peripheral part of a much wider world. In the first week, we will look at the concept of the ‘Global Middle Ages’, to consider it as a 21st century way of knowing which aims to decolonise the study of the Middle Ages. In the two subsequent seminars, we will look at medieval maps (both in images and words) and at objects to consider medieval and modern ways of knowing the world and how they can be brought together.
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ASSESSMENT
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Group Poster Presentations (Week 11)
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Please note that the aim of this core module is to expose you to disciplines with which you have little experience, so try and challenge yourself and choose topics outside of your comfort zone. For example, if you are from a Literature background, why not choose Using Archaeology? You might want to choose mini-modules to complement your option module choices (for example, taking Introduction to History of Art because you have no experience of History of Art and you want to take Painting on Light in the Spring term.
