Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students: A Digital Symposium, Georgia Institute of Technology, December 4, 2023

We’re pleased to announce “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) 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.

“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?