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Program Information

The doctoral program in Early Modern Studies provides graduate students with the opportunity to focus on the history and culture of the late medieval and early modern periods, circa 1350-1800, with an emphasis on global, interdisciplinary approaches. It welcomes students working in wide range of languages and geographies across the world. This program expands the structure and foci of the doctoral program in Renaissance Studies, which has a long and vibrant history at Yale. It is the only doctoral program of its kind in the United States.

Structured as a combined doctoral degree, the program enables students in one of ten partner departments to pursue greater interdisciplinary study and research. Students must matriculate in one a “home” department, and after two semesters of graduate study at Yale, may apply to join the combined doctoral program in Early Modern Studies.

Specific details for each partner department are listed below.

The Program also serves as a vital intellectual hub for a growing community of early modern scholars at Yale: it sponsors lectures, workshops, working groups, reading groups, and numerous social events. It collaborates with the Councils at the Macmillan Center  as well as individual departmental colloquia. Through its membership in the Folger Research Consortium and the Newberry Research Consortium it supports additional training and research opportunities for faculty and graduate students.  

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News

February 12, 2024
The award recognizes excellence in teaching in undergraduate programs and enables recipients to dedicate their summer to research. Four Yale faculty members — Nana Osei...
December 21, 2023
Ivano Dal Prete has received the 2022 Helen & Howard Marraro Prize in Italian History of the American Catholic Historical Association for his book: On the Edge of...
March 6, 2023
The American Journal of Philology, one of the premier Classics journals in the US, recently named Erika Valdivieso as winner of the journal’s ‘Best Article Prize’ for 2021. ...

Launching a new core proseminar in Fall 2022

EMST 700a/701b: Workshop in Early Modern Studies

What is the nature of the “early modern” as a temporal, conceptual, and socio-political category in humanistic study? How did it emerge as an interdisciplinary framework and how does it relate to concepts of the medieval, the Renaissance, classicism, and modernity? Can “early modern” be usefully deployed to speak of non-Western geographic and political formations—and if not, why? Broadly focused on the historical period between 1350 and 1800, this seminar considers the many transitions to modernity across the globe and explores how scholars across the disciplines have crafted narratives to highlight its significance. Taken over an entire academic year, as two half-credit courses, the workshop provides a historiographic, theoretical, and methodological introduction to key questions in the field through a dynamic engagement with a series of research presentations by scholars within and beyond Yale (must be taken concurrently with EMST 800a/801b). Required for students in the combined degree in Early Modern Studies.

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