Teaching

Medieval Latin at Harvard

Undergraduates may specialize in Medieval Latin as a degree option within Classics. Concentrators in History and Literature, Literature, and Folklore and Mythology sometimes make Medieval Latin a formal component in their degrees. Of course, pursuing a degree or other formal accreditation in Medieval Latin is by no means required of students who are interested in the field.

At one time or another, graduate students in more than ten different humanities departments and programs at Harvard, totaling more than fifty, have incorporated Medieval Latin into their general examinations and/or their dissertations (Celtic, Classics Languages and Literatures, Comparative Literature, Divinity School, English, History, History of Art and Architecture, History of Science, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Romance Languages and Literatures). Although Medieval Studies at Harvard is decentralized, the community is strong at all levels (undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and librarians). Links between the Committee on Medieval Studies and the Department of the Classics have been particularly numerous and strong in both Latin and Greek. Since the time of the late Herbert Bloch, Classics has had a Ph.D. program in Medieval Latin philology. Graduates over the decades have included Marc Laureys, who heads the seminar for Medieval Latin and Neo-Latin philology at the University of Bonn in Germany; Bridget Balint, associate professor at Indiana University; Justin Lake, associate professor at Texas A&M; Justin Stover, lecturer in Medieval Latin at the University of Edinburgh; David Ungvary, assistant professor at Bard College; and Julian Yolles, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern Denmark. In bygone decades Comparative Literature, though it never had an explicitly labeled “medieval track,” attracted and accepted numerous medievalists who elected Medieval Latin as either their major literature or one of their minors. Committees such as “Folklore and Mythology” and “Medieval Studies” do not admit and fund graduate students, but they can enrich and certify programs. At the undergraduate level they offer opportunities as a concentration and secondary field, respectively.