Students may have a new option in declaring an undergraduate minor with the start of the Medieval and Renaissance Interdisciplinary Studies project.
The project, also known as MARIS, will work to bring a medieval and renaissance minor to the University, creating a core introductory class for students to take as a prerequisite.
Maribel Dietz, a history professor, and Kirstin Noreen, a medieval art history professor, led an orientation Friday afternoon outlining the goals and purpose of the project.
One of the main goals is the desire to introduce MARIS studies to a wider LSU community.
Dietz said making this a minor would bring different departments of the University, faculty and students together by encouraging their involvement in this area of history.
“We want to unite people in all the different colleges,” Dietz said. “We want to put something together that students are interested in.”
The program brings three distinguished speakers to campus to discuss different aspects of the studies, the first being a UCLA history professor, Teofilo Ruiz, on Feb. 14. His speech is titled “The Witch-Craze in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe.”
Other speakers will give presentations on the different types of technology available for the studies, such as three-dimensional programs.
Dorothy Verkerk, an art history professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, will show how classes can use certain software to make 3-D models of places during medieval times in her April lecture “Cyber Celts: Computers and Classroom Strategies.”
The speeches, open to all students, are meant to heighten the curiosity of the MARIS project and give some insight into what the project will accomplish if and when it is made an official minor for the spring semester of 2004.
“[The presentations] are for students interested in this time period to see what it’s really about,” Dietz said. “We want to make the program student-friendly.”
Dietz said the minor would be similar to that of African-American and women’s and gender minors currently at the University.
Another goal of MARIS is to enhance the University’s reputation in arts and humanities.
“[The program] will explore new trends in humanity as well as develop a more diverse curriculum,” Noreen said.
Dietz said before MARIS, there was no existing framework to unite faculty studying medieval history.
The MARIS project would unite faculty research and teaching development by holding a workshop series for faculty members and hosting a faculty forum for students and faculty to voice any questions or suggestions for the project.
There also will be a lecture series, for which the University invited six scholars from universities around the country, to further discuss different topics of medieval and renaissance times.
For more information about the project and times and dates of upcoming speakers, visit the MARIS Web site at www.lsu.edu/faculty/maribel.