The workshop focuses on the literature, history, and culture of the Middle Ages, defined roughly as 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. The Middle Ages is a vast period that witnessed profound social, political, religious, cultural , linguistic, and artistic transformations. The workshop makes possible encounters among scholars from across the University, including the departments of English, History, Art History, Music, Romance Languages and Literatures, Comparative Literature, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics, and the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought.