The Future of Teaching the Middle Ages in Higher Education Dr Vicky Gunn Dr Leah Shopkow University of Glasgow Indiana University

Challenges and paradoxes

What does an increasingly diverse student body tell us about how we still generate knowledge in the discipline?

Generally Are essentialist conceptions still underpinning our approaches to what and how the students should be learning? Are coverage and content still the deciding factors in notions of course design?

How is this played out in the discipline? Notion of relevance and usefulness; Maintenance of traditional teaching and learning methods; Growing polarity between manuscript transmission scholarship and new theoretical approaches; Solo practitioner leads postulants to a position where a novitiate is possible;

Reconceptions

Generally Should we redefine the boundaries of the discipline and transform the nature of the subject through the development of a research culture that constantly challenges the epistemological, methodological and philosophical approaches to content and methods of delivery?

How might this be played out in Institutions? Joint research and the development of collaborative research culture; Team teaching; the development of a scholarly approach to how the methods we use to package and deliver the Middle Ages impact on discipline developments; BOTH VALUED AS EQUALLY IMPORTANT