A Med/Ren Milestone
Simon Grote and Sarah Wall-Randell ’97 are two of the 21 faculty members from 11 departments—from music to Spanish to philosophy—affiliated with Wellesley’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025.
Co-founded by Eugene Cox, Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of History emeritus, and the late Peter Fergusson, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art emeritus, the program allows majors to “explore European and Mediterranean civilizations in all their richness and diversity, from the fourth through the 17th centuries,” according to its website. A few of the courses available to majors in the spring semester included ARTH 229: Islamic Arts of the Book; HIST 246: Vikings, Icons, Mongols, and Tsars; and SPAN 278: Writing Women: Early Modern Spain.
“Students are able to assemble their major from this really rich set of courses. We ask them to choose a focus, but the focus can be anything, and students have managed to do really deep studies in a wide variety of different geographical areas, specific periods, [and subjects like] gender, war,” says Wall-Randell. The program is known for its collegiality—and its potluck dinner for majors and faculty.
In spring 1976, Cox wrote in Wellesley magazine about the then-new program: “In a world that is so often too much with us, it is perhaps welcome news that Wellesley students enjoy so many opportunities for intellectual refreshment at all those fountains of wisdom and beauty that supplied so much of what we treasure in Western civilization today.”
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