About Us

The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies was established in 1968. Today Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Duke is a vibrant, cross-disciplinary humanities program that draws together faculty and students from many departments across the university to study and research the twelve-hundred-year period from 500 to 1700 that definitively shaped the civilizations of Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Americas of the New World. We aim to provide a community of intellectual engagement that respects the traditions of this past while carefully critiquing it and the ways in which we go about doing so.

Duke is one of a handful of American universities that offers a major and minor to undergraduate students, with access to a varied curriculum of more than a hundred courses. Graduate students may obtain our Certificate in Interdisciplinary Medieval and Renaissance Studies and participate in programming that affords opportunities to engage with faculty and students from disciplines beyond their own specialties. We actively collaborate with faculty and students at UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, and other nearby institutions. With over three hundred faculty and students working in our field in the Triangle area of Durham-Chapel Hill-Raleigh, Duke’s program is part of a true haven of scholarship and collaboration in medieval and early modern studies.