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EL50D4: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO THE RENAISSANCE (2023-2024)

Last modified: 23 Jul 2024 10:43


Course Overview

This core course is aimed at providing an introduction for students who have chosen the MLitt in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and want to study the Renaissance and early modern period from around 1450 to 1750 through a variety of interdisciplinary approaches.

Course Details

Study Type Postgraduate Level 5
Term First Term Credit Points 30 credits (15 ECTS credits)
Campus Aberdeen Sustained Study No
Co-ordinators
  • Professor Karin Friedrich
  • Professor Andrew D. H. Gordon

What courses & programmes must have been taken before this course?

  • Any Postgraduate Programme

What other courses must be taken with this course?

None.

What courses cannot be taken with this course?

Are there a limited number of places available?

No

Course Description

The Renaissance is an elastic term that brings together developments in the arts (including literature, art, music, and the built environment), with historical transformations in technologies, practices and belief systems. It is inherently cross-cultural, encompassing cultural exchange that has been increasingly understood in global terms, beyond an exclusively European framework.  The Renaissance is then an inherently interdisciplinary concept and in this course we bring together specialists from different subject areas to explore a range of approaches to the period and its cultural products.

Drawing on the research expertise of staff from the interdisciplinary Centre for Early Modern Studies, this core course approaches the early modern period through the eyes of Renaissance artists, writers and scholars from within their own creative and ideological contexts, and through the study of cultural consumption within popular and elite contexts. It also introduces students to the manifold interpretations of what scholars over time have called ‘the Renaissance’, traditionally,  associated with an awakening of individualism in art and literature, a focus on ‘state-building’, religious scepticism, rationalism, natural knowledge and new artistic perspectives.. Instead of perceiving the period from 1450-1750 as transient centuries, moving towards ‘modernity’, we offer students an exciting interdisciplinary exploration of Renaissance and early modern culture, making them familiar with the cultural changes following the Middle Ages, and an awareness of different ways of interpreting and analysing texts, objects and art from the period. Areas of potential study will include material culture, the meaning and role of translation, music, the reformation of society and belief and the increasingly global position of Renaissance ideas and practices. Students will read key texts on the Renaissance, attend research seminars by CEMS and other centres/departments (e.g. EL, HA, PH, DRS) with fitting Renaissance- and early modern-related papers and write a comparative review of their seminar experiences. They will also visit the University’s Museum and Special Collections Archives to choose sources, objects and materials to analyse for their assessment. With this focus they will reflect on the limits of scholarly disciplines and experiment with interdisciplinarity themselves.


Contact Teaching Time

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

Teaching Breakdown

More Information about Week Numbers


Details, including assessments, may be subject to change until 30 August 2024 for 1st term courses and 20 December 2024 for 2nd term courses.

Summative Assessments

A critical review of a research seminar attended during the course/term.

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 30
Assessment Weeks 16 Feedback Weeks 18

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Feedback

Written feedback on Blackboard Collaborate and in individual tutorial meeting.

Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualCreateTo be able to pursue research questions across departmental and disciplinary boundaries.
ProceduralAnalyseTo acquire research skills needed to find, read and analyse these sources.
ReflectionEvaluateTo acquire the knowledge of, assess and evaluate the relationship between European and Global cultures during this period of dramatic geographical and intellectual expansion and of profound political

Report on two different disciplinary approaches to a chosen object of study.

Assessment Type Summative Weighting 70
Assessment Weeks 19 Feedback Weeks 21

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Feedback

Report on two different disciplinary approaches to a chosen object of study. The object of study can be a text (e.g. literary, historical, religious), material object, piece of music, or element of visual culture or other artefact by agreement from the period 1450-1750.

Written feedback on Blackboard Collaborate and in individual tutorial meeting.

Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualCreateTo be able to pursue research questions across departmental and disciplinary boundaries.
FactualUnderstandTo become familiar with the range of resources available for studying the cultures of Europe and the wider world during the period from ca. 1450 to ca. 1750
ProceduralAnalyseTo acquire research skills needed to find, read and analyse these sources.

Formative Assessment

Student presentations to each other on their chosen projects for summative assessment 1.

Assessment Type Formative Weighting
Assessment Weeks 17,18 Feedback Weeks 17,18

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Feedback

Oral feedback by tutor and peers in seminar meeting.

Learning Outcomes
Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
ConceptualCreateTo be able to pursue research questions across departmental and disciplinary boundaries.
FactualUnderstandTo become familiar with the range of resources available for studying the cultures of Europe and the wider world during the period from ca. 1450 to ca. 1750
ReflectionEvaluateTo acquire the knowledge of, assess and evaluate the relationship between European and Global cultures during this period of dramatic geographical and intellectual expansion and of profound political

Course Learning Outcomes

Knowledge LevelThinking SkillOutcome
FactualUnderstandTo become familiar with the range of resources available for studying the cultures of Europe and the wider world during the period from ca. 1450 to ca. 1750
ProceduralAnalyseTo acquire research skills needed to find, read and analyse these sources.
ReflectionEvaluateTo acquire the knowledge of, assess and evaluate the relationship between European and Global cultures during this period of dramatic geographical and intellectual expansion and of profound political
ConceptualCreateTo be able to pursue research questions across departmental and disciplinary boundaries.

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