Stanford CMEMS is a multidisciplinary community working together to reveal new perspectives on medieval and early modern studies
CMEMS sponsors or co-sponsors a wide range of workshops and research groups that cohere into a stimulating program of opportunities for students and faculty to engage in focused discussion and debate
How can we make historical materials, social and cultural practices and extant sites accessible in the present day? In this course, students will have the opportunity to design and create an innovative digital project based on a medieval primary source. In the first part of the course, we will familiarize ourselves with medieval European cultural history, focusing on different kinds of sources, including historical and religious texts, narrative and music, architecture, images, objects, and textiles. Then we will examine and evaluate digital resources and approaches to medieval sources, including digital facsimiles, experiments with virtual spaces, and informational sites. In order to contemporize and vivify the medieval, an integral component of this course will be the California Missions, since they so dramatically represent a medieval modus operandi in a modern, and, for Stanford, local, world.
An introduction to the essential tool-kit for medievalists, this course will give all medievalists a great head start in knowing how to access and interpret major works and topics in the field. Stanford's medieval faculty will explain the key sources and methods in the major disciplines from History to Religion, French to Arabic, English to Chinese, and Art History to German and Music. In so doing, students will be introduced to the breadth and interdisciplinary potential of Medieval Studies. A workshop devoted to Digital Technologies and Codicology/Palaeography will offer elementary training in these fundamental skills.