Medieval

Introduction

The Medieval History field at UCLA aims to provide graduate students with the training to become rigorous researchers, effective teachers, nimble communicators, and good colleagues. While firmly grounded in the historical discipline, we are also deeply committed to interdisciplinarity as part of the work of investigating a complex historical record. So in addition to their training in history, students of medieval history at UCLA benefit from the university’s strong programs in languages and literature (including but not limited to Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Bosnian, Catalan, Coptic, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Old English and Middle English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Kazakh, Middle Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sogdian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian), as well as related disciplines such as art history, anthropology, archaeology, and others. One of the requirements for the Ph.D. qualifying examination is, in fact, a field outside history, underlining our commitment to integrating different theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary approaches to the history of the Middle Ages.

The CMRS Center for Early Global Studies at UCLA serves as the locus for scholarly exchanges and collaborations across disciplines. The Center sponsors renowned visiting scholars, lectures, workshops, conferences, and research projects in all areas of medieval history and culture; offers a graduate certificate in Global Medieval Studies; and supports interdisciplinary graduate seminars every year that enable UCLA students to meet and interact with prominent authorities in late antique, medieval, renaissance, and early modern studies. The Center also provides graduate students with fellowships and research assistantships on a competitive basis.

Our program is further linked to institutions across the city and state. The Huntington Library and the Getty Center offer our graduate students access to their important scholarly resources. And three times a year medievalists from around the state gather at UCLA to discuss their research under the auspices of the California Medieval Seminar. These seminars offer graduate students and faculty alike a vibrant intellectual environment to share written work, build inter- and cross-disciplinary networks, and engage with an ever-wider range of topics, fields, geographical regions, and methods.

Admission and Program Requirements

For information regarding admission and program requirements: https://grad.ucla.edu/programs/social-sciences/history/

For information on applying to the graduate program in History: https://history.ucla.edu/academics/graduate/admissions-information/

Note: Graduate students admitted to the Medieval field are expected to have a strong background in medieval history or related fields, a good foundation in Latin or other medieval language/s, and a viable plan for learning the other languages that are necessary for their research. We encourage potential applicants with questions to contact the faculty member whose research aligns most closely with their own interests.

Faculty

  • Jessica Goldberg: Ph.D., History, Columbia University, 2006
    Medieval Economic, Legal, and Social History; Eastern and Western Mediterranean Merchant Networks and Economic Geography especially in Italy and Egypt; Cairo Geniza
    310-267-5942; goldberg@history.ucla.edu
  • Jamie Kreiner: Ph.D., Princeton University, 2011
    Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages
    310-825-4620; jkreiner@history.ucla.edu

Emeritus Faculty

 

Related Fields: See the list of faculty affiliated with CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.