Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students
- Medievalitas
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
The fall 2026, volume 33, issue 2, of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART) entitled Teaching the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to STEM Students, is in print and in the mail to subscribers and issue contributors. A huge word of thanks my extraordinary co-editor, Lainie Pomerleau, and to Kristi Bixby, the SMART managing editor! And of course to the contributors, for sharing their insights and scholarship with all of us.
The articles in this issue of SMART come from a December 2023 online symposium on “Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students,” organized by Lainie Pomerleau (College of Coastal Georgia) and Richard Utz (Georgia Institute of Technology), who asked participants to explore teaching premodern subject matter to student audiences that mostly or entirely consist of STEM majors.
Contributions revealed the evolving focus of higher education but also the continued relevance of and fascination with medieval and Renaissance subject matter across academic disciplines. The varied and unique symposium presentations revealed apparent themes: universities are experiencing change and challenges nationwide; there are more STEM and STEM-industry adjacent students than humanities students, which call for new, innovative, and adaptive critical approaches to teaching medieval and Renaissance material; and faculty in the medieval and Renaissance fields are well-positioned to employ more interdisciplinary pedagogic models.
Table of Contents:
LAINIE POMERLEAU and RICHARD UTZ Introduction: Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students
MONICA H. GREEN An Omni-Crisis at the Intersection of Disciplines: Teaching the Black Death to STEM and Humanities Students
ANDREEA BOBOC Teaching Contagion: Medieval to Early Modern
KEVIN MOBERLY and BRENT MOBERLY Fail Backwards: Bridging STEM and Medieval Studies through Critical Game Design
KEN MONDSCHEIN Meeting Them Where They’re At: Teaching the Premodern to STEM Students
EMILIANO GUTIÉRREZ-POPOCA Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Colonialism through Data Visualization Tools
SCOTT MANNING Sharing Joan of Arc with Lifelong Learners at a Fortune 50 Tech Company
DORI COBLENTZ To Obstruct and Delight: Antagonistic Collaboration for Humanities-STEM Transfer
JULIANA VIEZURE Interest-Based Learning in Medieval History Courses: The Passion Project