Matt Klemm, Associate  Professor, Department of History, and Co-coordinator
Dan Breen, Associate Professor, Department of Literatures in English, and Co-coordinator

The Global Premodern Studies minor offers an opportunity for students to design a course of study for thinking critically and expansively about the world before 1700. In particular, we encourage courses of study that expand or that transect linguistic, national, or period boundaries, in a range of departments and programs across the college. The geographical and regional boundaries upon which many of our academic disciplines and departments depend are not trans-historical givens; they are constantly being generated and historically in flux. How can interdisciplinary study of earlier periods and their cultural productions help us understand the overlapping worlds that make up the globe? The pre-industrial past can provide new ways of thinking through today’s most pressing issues, including climate change, structural inequalities, and racial and economic justice. While the study of the past can teach us how we arrived in the current moment, it can also teach us how we and our world might have turned out differently. In this interdisciplinary and flexible minor, students can explore, engage, and interrogate multiple pasts from all over the world. The Global Premodern Studies minor complements a range of majors, such as Literatures in English; History; Art History; Politics; Philosophy; Religious Studies; Environmental Studies; Race, Power, and Resistance; and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and encourages the kind of synthetic thinking that is especially important in the professional fields of education and law. Students considering graduate study in the fields traditionally associated with the humanities or the arts will also find the minor to be both helpful and provocative.  

Minor Requirements

Students in the Global Premodern Studies minor design their own interdisciplinary path through the minor. Courses that count towards the minor are drawn primarily from the departments of art history, literatures in English, history, philosophy and religion, and world languages, literatures, and cultures. The student’s individualized plan for the program should be on file no later than the start of the student’s senior year at the College.

Course List

Code	Title	Credits
In consultation with the minor adviser, students select 18-20 credits of courses that emphasize the history, literature, religion, philosophy (including political theory), language, or art of a culture prior to 1700, and that meet the following criteria:		18-20
•credits must be drawn from a minimum of three different program subject codes
•no more than four credits from a student’s major or other minor may overlap with Global Premodern Studies courses
•no more than four credits from courses taken at an institution other than Ithaca College may count toward the minor in Global Premodern Studies
Total Credits		18-20