The best aspects of an interdisciplinary program with the focused training required for academic careers

Academics

Since 1966, Cornell’s Program in Medieval Studies has combined the best aspects of an interdisciplinary program with the focused training required for academic careers in a variety of traditional disciplines. The Program’s faculty are drawn from nearly every humanities department at Cornell; together, they offer expertise in a wide array of disciplines and area studies spanning more than a millennium of languages and cultures—from Old and Middle English literature to Byzantine monuments; from Viking studies to Andalusian architecture; from Chinese intellectual history to Islamic legal history.

Explore Academics Pursuits

Graduate Program Undergraduate Minor Current Courses Program Faculty Current Graduate Students Alumni Placement Procedural Guide for the Field Medieval Studies Reading Groups

Student Groups

The Medieval Studies Graduate Association (MSGA) is an independent entity. Its funds are purely and wholly for the disposal of its own working brief. The MSGA is dedicated to being a forum for sustained discussion and debate within the student medievalist body on campus and to strengthening connectivity between these students.

Click here for more details on the Medieval Studies Graduate Association

The Medieval Studies Student Colloquium (MSSC) is an independent organization dedicated to showcasing the ideas and research of the medievalist graduate student community at Cornell and the wider world, and to strengthening the connectivity between these medievalists.

Click here for more details on the Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

Quodlibet provides a lively forum for all those interested in all things medieval on campus, and organizes a series of lectures to highlight current research topics relating to medieval studies.

Click here to explore the Quodlibet website

News

New book introduces Maimonides, ‘one of civilization’s greatest minds’

Maimonides, one of the most significant intellectual figures of the medieval period,worked as a physician, thought like a scientist, and served as a leader of the Jewish community in Cairo.

From posters to precedent, humanities scholars showcase their research

Projects spanned topics from Confederate cemeteries to Korean textiles.

S. Gottfried wins inaugural Carol Kaske Prize

S. Gottfried won the Carol Kaske Prize for the essay, "We’re Off to the Wild Woods: A Phenomenological Investigation of the First Branch of the Mabinogi"

Willow Groundwater-Schuldt wins inaugural Tom Hill Graduate Essay Award

Willow Groundwater-Schuldt won the Tom Hill Graduate Essay Award for her essay, "The Hysteric Kriemhild"

Sarah LaVoy-Brunette awarded a Henry Roe Cloud Fellowship, Yale

Sarah LaVoy-Brunette will be in residence at Yale during the 2025/26 academic year as a Henry Roe Cloud Fellow in support of her dissertation, “Converting the Wilderness: The Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Early Medieval England and Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nihgeh.”