Register here for “Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students” digital symposium hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology‘s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, together with the Studies in Medieval Renaissance Teaching (SMART) from 9am-2pm, December 4, 2023. The symposium will be held entirely on Zoom and brings together colleagues with professional experience at teaching medieval and Renaissance subject matter to student audiences mostly or entirely consisting of STEM majors. The symposium Zoom link will be sent to registrants the Friday before the event.
“Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students” invites proposals for 15-minute presentations that explore teaching medieval and Renaissance subject matter to student audiences mostly or entirely consisting of STEM majors. The increasing importance of the sciences and technology at institutions of higher learning suggests that medievalists and Renaissance scholars also have an increased need to understand how we should respond to student audiences whose focus lies outside the humanities and social sciences. Are STEM students’ horizons of expectation and interest substantially different from those in art, history, literary studies, music, religion, philosophy, or sociology? Do these audiences (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) and their environments (labs, future- and progress-orientedness, linkages to industry, profession-ready education) demand that we adjust our themes, philosophies, and methodological approaches? How is the instruction of medieval and Renaissance subject matter structurally integrated for these audiences and environments?
Symposium Schedule:
Bodies of Knowledge (9am-10am)
- “An Omni-Crisis at the Intersection of Disciplines: Teaching the Black Death to STEM and Humanities Students,” Monica H. Green, Fellow, Medieval Academy of America, Independent Scholar
- “Medieval Disability Studies and STEM Education,” Kisha G. Tracy, Fitchburg State University
- “Teaching Contagion: Medieval to Early Modern,” Andreea Boboc, University of the Pacific
Generating Interest (10am-11am)
- “Speaking Their Language: Communication Across Disciplines in the Classroom Proposal for Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students,” Alice Wolff, Cornell University
- “Interest-Based Learning in Medieval History Courses: The Passion Project,” Juliana Viezure, Georgia Institute of Technology
- “Sharing a Sanitized Joan of Arc in a Fortune 100 Tech Company,” Scott Manning, Independent Scholar
Visualizing the Past (11:30pm-12:45 pm)
- “Fail Backwards: Bridging STEM and Medieval Studies through Critical Game Design,” Kevin Moberly, Old Dominion University & Brent Moberly, Independent Scholar,
- “‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November’: A Proposal for Reacting to the Past: The Gunpowder Plot,” Dan Mills, Georgia Institute of Technology
- “Teaching Vikings: Walking the Line between Passion and Problem,” Eric Shane Bryan, Missouri University of Science and Technology
- “Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Colonialism Through Data Visualization Tools,” Emiliano Gutierrez-Popoca, Georgia Institute of Technology
Teaching Tools (12:45pm-2:00pm)
- “Teaching the Premodern with Tech Tools,” Ken Mondschein, Massachusetts Historical Swordsmanship
- “Making the Premodern Past Meaningful to Engineering Students: Observations from Five Years of Teaching at Colorado School of Mines,” Eliza Buhrer, Colorado School of Mines
- “Estranged Reading Practices for Metacognitive Growth: Using Renaissance Texts in STEM-Focused Academic Writing Classes,” Dori Coblentz, Georgia Institute of Technology
- “Teaching Construction History to STEM Students,” Brian Bowen, Georgia Institute of Technology