Undergraduate Minor
The Program in Medieval Studies offers an undergraduate interdisciplinary Minor in Medieval Studies.
The Minor has three principal purposes:
- To give undergraduate students who have an interest in Medieval Studies the benefit of advising as to what courses are available in the various departments and how certain courses might fit together into a meaningful sequence or cluster.
- To enable students to be informed as to lectures, colloquia, social events, and conferences that they might find of interest.
- To allow those undergraduates who complete substantial work in Medieval Studies to have that fact acknowledged. Should those students wish to pursue further academic work after graduation, their chances of success in the competition for admission to graduate school will be enhanced, not just because of the official notice on their transcript but because they will have gained greater professional competence through informed participation in the Program in Medieval Studies at Berkeley.
Undergraduates who contemplate applying for the Minor should contact the Graduate/Undergraduate Advisor, currently Professor Professor Elaine Tennant, to discuss their interests and needs.
Students can receive credit for fulfilling the Minor by completing any five upper-division or graduate courses in Medieval Studies. Please note that the following restrictions apply.
- At least three of the five courses must be taken at U.C. Berkeley.
- The courses must be of 3 or 4 units and must be taken for a letter grade, with a minimum GPA of 2.0 in those courses.
- So that cross-disciplinary skills are ensured, only three of the five courses may be taken in a single department. Students should consult with a Letters and Science advisor to ensure that there is no more overlap between the Minor and the Major programs than is permissible. Only one course can be counted toward both the major and the minor degrees.
- The Graduate/Undergraduate Advisor in Medieval Studies must certify that the five courses do qualify as courses in Medieval Studies. This verification should take place early in the student's last term at Berkeley. Previous consultation with the Advisor is strongly recommended.
Recommended Courses
Students who are contemplating advanced work in Medieval Studies should, if possible, take History 4B (Origins of Western Civilization: The Middle Ages) early in their undergraduate career. Other lower division courses too are recommended (e.g. Italian Studies 30, "Dante," and Music 75, "History of Western Music to 1700"), but only upper division courses can be counted toward the Minor.
Qualifying Courses
For purposes of determining what is and is not a Medieval Studies course, any course on the following list does qualify as a Medieval Studies course. Any other course for which the student seeks approval (such as a special topics course, or a non-U.C. Berkeley course) must be shown to have a comparably strong focus on the Middle Ages. Although the list is current as of January 2001, it is subject to future revision.
105A and B (Old and Middle Irish)
118A and B (Medieval Irish Literature)
119A and B (Welsh and Arthurian Literature of the Middle Ages)
128 (Medieval Celtic Culture)
146A and B (Medieval Welsh Literature)
C168 (Celtic Mythology and Oral Tradition)
Latin 140 (Medieval Latin)
Latin 155A and B (Readings in Medieval Latin)
152 (The Middle Ages)
105 (Anglo-Saxon England)
110 (Medieval Literature)
111 (Chaucer)
112 (Middle English)
114A (English Drama to 1603)
205A (Introduction to Old English)
205B (Beowulf)
112A and B (Medieval Literature)
114A and B (Late Medieval Literature)
105 (Middle High German)
110 (The Literature of the Middle Ages)
109A (Islamic History)
150A, B, and C (Medieval England)
155A and B (Medieval Europe)
156A, B, and C (Topics in Medieval History)
185A (History of Christianity from Beginnings to 1250)
151 (Art in Late Antiquity)
154 (Byzantine Art)
155 (Romanesque Art)
156A or B (Gothic Art)
157 (The Illuminated Book)
192C (Undergraduate Seminar: Medieval)
109 (Dante's Divine Comedy, in Italian)
110 (Literature and Culture of the 13th and 14th Centuries)
130A and B (Dante's Divine Comedy, in English)
140 (Medieval Latin)
150 (Studies in Medieval Culture)
210 (Palaeography and Codicology)
171B (Medieval and Renaissance Music)
C133 (Judaism in Late Antiquity)
150A (Arabic Literature in Translation)
153 (the Medieval Frametale Genre)
Hebrew 103A or B (Later Rabbinic and Medieval Hebrew)
C108 (Scandinavian Myth and Religion)
C109 (Celtic Mythology and Oral Tradition)
123 (Europe in the Middle Ages)
C133 (Judaism in Late Antiquity)
105B (Rhetorical Theory and Practice in Historical Eras: The Middle Ages)
123 (Viking and Medieval Scandinavia)
125 (Old Norse Literature)
C160 (Scandinavian Myth and Religion)
201A (Old Norse)
201B (Norse Literature)
202 (Medieval Scandinavian Literature)
220 (Early Scandinavian Literature)
210 (Old Church Slavic)
214 (Medieval Orthodox Slavic Texts)
107A (Spanish Literature to 1700)
108 (Spanish Ballads)
126 (Medieval Spanish Literature)
