Graduate Certificate

Our Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate Program is designed to allow M.A. students in English, Religion, and the Divinity School both to broaden their knowledge of the medieval period and to focus their studies on the medieval period. The certificate combines programmatic interdisciplinary coursework, training in the technical skills of medieval studies, and linguistic preparation. We offer prospective and first‐year MA students this program in order to provide them with a competitive advantage in admission to doctoral programs. Students may be admitted to the MA Program when they are admitted to the graduate program in the department to which they apply by permission of the Directors or at any time during their first year.

Students are required to required to take a minimum of four additional courses (12 semester credit hours) with a medieval and/or early modern focus, preferably as MA course offerings, though independent study and advanced undergraduate courses may be taken as well (see below for list of approved courses). Courses must cover two different disciplinary fields in addition to that of the candidate’s home department. The graduate thesis must have a medieval and/or early modern focus, and the thesis committee should have at least two participating departments represented. Students in the program meet with an advisor each semester to work out the most efficient path towards fulfilling the certificate. This includes consultation in preparation for the MA thesis.

Our Certificate will generally not require more time to complete than the host MA program (but if a student does not complete the course work in the allotted time, fees may apply). While students working towards the Certificate are required to take four courses in Medieval and/or Early Modern beyond the standard requirements of the departmental MA, some of those additional courses may be taken as an overload during the academic years or during the summer. Students are strongly encouraged to apply for extramural fellowships to study one or more summers at the international sites where a medieval studies curriculum is available (e.g., St Peter’s College at Oxford). A final mechanism is to request approval from the relevant departmental graduate committee to apply two of the courses taken toward completion for the MA degree toward the certificate program with the addition of relevant course‐related materials.

Students pursuing the Certificate may avail themselves of many activities and opportunities including the Medieval Studies lecture series; the paper competition that rewards the winners with funding to the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University; the Gordon A. Melson Graduate Student Award in Medieval Studies, specifically awarded to an outstanding graduate student to attend the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University; the medieval studies summer program at St. Peter’s College, Oxford; the annual Wake Forest Medieval Studies Student Society Conference, a student‐organized interdisciplinary conference inviting participation from graduates and undergraduates from surrounding universities; the medieval section of the department’s library in the Archie Ammons English Department Faculty Lounge; the establishment of internships and fellowships for La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Spanish Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, edited by Professor Sol Miguel‐Prendes, a medievalist in the Romance Language department.