The minor in Renaissance studies offers students an interdisciplinary examination of the networks of trade, culture, and power that, in the formative centuries between the Black Death and the Enlightenment, profoundly changed the culture and society of Europe and the Mediterranean and brought the region into contact with the broader globe. This era birthed empires, economies, literatures, languages, conflicts, technologies, and ideas whose influence, both within the European continent and well beyond, powerfully shaped the advent and structures of modernity.
The minor unites the humanities and social sciences, teaching students to use the tools of multiple disciplines to examine the society, art, literature, music, and the political, economic, and historical experiences of the Renaissance world. A student might choose to minor in Renaissance studies in order to reach beyond the lens of one discipline to see how major figures (Machiavelli, Luther, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare) or major events (the Reformation, European contact with the Americas) yield different insights when examined with the diverse methods and tools of inquiry used in different departments.