Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies

Application Deadline: September 30, 2026

Program Overview

The Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies reflects new established paradigms in research. For many years, humanistic and social science research focused on temporal connectivity, that is, continuity through time (linearity, genealogy, teleology).  In the last two decades, research focusing on spatial connectivities has led to the development of transnational, global, and connected-history approaches.

The Graduate Certificate program in Global Medieval Studies applies a new “global” research model. It takes up the challenge of regional world systems, that is, of the plurality of early worlds. It provides transdisciplinary training based on exchanging methodologies and epistemologies rather than in the narrative of spatial and/or temporal connectivities. It brings to bear the lessons of comparative history on the knowledge we gain by putting unconnected and weakly connected worlds into dialogue. What are methodologically either cognitive dissonances or concordances are epistemologically a range of shared and global phenomena in an unconnected world. In other words, methodology and comparison connect distinct areas of the globe. Connected methodologies enable a transperiodic (non-continuous) and transspatial (non-contiguous) study of early worlds. The certificate program offers students educational opportunities to explore and apply this new research perspective.

The Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies is administered by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and housed in the Department of Comparative Literature.

Eligibility

All incoming or current UCLA graduate students pursuing an MA or PhD in some aspect of medieval studies are eligible to apply for this certificate program.

Application Process:

Admission to the certificate program is competitive. Applications are reviewed once a year.
The next application deadline is September 30, 2026.

Required Materials (PDF format preferred):

  1. Personal statement (one page, single-spaced) describing your qualifications for and interests in this certificate program.
  2. One letter of recommendation from your faculty advisor or department chair. This letter should be uploaded by the recommender (see below).
  3. A copy of your current transcript. If the fall quarter is your first academic term at UCLA, please submit a transcript from the last university you attended.HOW TO APPLY? Click here for application submission instructions.
Certificate Completion Requirements
  1. Course Requirements
    Successful completion (“B” or better) of four 200-level classes from the current list of approved courses, as follows:
    • One Methodology course (usually in Fall)
    • One course within your primary research area or home department
    • Two courses outside your primary research area or home department
  1. Research Paper
    Write an interdisciplinary medieval studies paper (maximum 5,000 words) under the guidance of a CMRS-CEGS faculty member and present it at a CMRS-CEGS Works-in-Progress session.
  2. Event Attendance
    Attend three different CMRS-CEGS lectures or conferences (two of which should be outside your primary study area). For each, write a 500-word paper discussing how the presentation reflects the unique global research perspective of CMRS-CEGS and the Global Medieval Studies Certificate program.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can courses I’ve already taken count toward the certificate?

  • No. Only classes taken after you are accepted into the certificate program will count toward the certificate requirements.

Can I petition to add a course to the pre-approved list?

  • Yes. You may petition to have a 200-level, 4.0-unit graduate seminar considered for the pre-approved list. Contact CMRS-CEGS well before the course begins with complete information, including a syllabus if available. Allow at least two weeks for review. Courses cannot be approved after they have started. You will be notified via e-mail of the committee’s decision, and if approved, the seminar will be added to the pre-approved list posted on this website.

Must I take courses for a letter grade?

  • Yes. All certificate courses must be 200-level, 4.0-unit seminars taken for a letter grade, even if S/U is offered.

How do I count an event toward my requirements?

  • Submit a 500-word paper to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu within one week of attending. Include your name, event details, and a discussion of how it reflects the program’s global research perspective. Contact CMRS-CEGS in advance if unsure whether an event qualifies.
Certificate Graduates
2024-2025

Amanda Styles (Library Science)

We are pleased to recognize Amanda Styles as the first student to complete the Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies. Amanda earned her Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from UCLA’s Information Studies Department and CMRS Center for Early Global Studies Certificate in Global Medieval Studies in June 2025. She also holds a Highest Honors BA in English with a minor in Medieval Studies from UC Berkeley (2022).

Throughout her MLIS program, Amanda specialized in Rare Books/Print and Visual Culture, with a particular interest in the provenance, curation, and accessibility of medieval manuscripts and incunabula. Under the direction of CalRBS Director and MLIS Associate Professor Robert Montoya, Amanda wrote her master’s thesis entitled, “Who Handles Medieval Manuscripts? Institutional Gatekeeping and the Guise of Growing Access.” This work explores the often ritualistic and participatory handling of medieval manuscripts within their original context in juxtaposition with modern practices imposed in special collections reading rooms, while questioning the accessibility and bias of library request systems and the digital facsimiles that institutions push as substitution for physical handling.

In September 2025, Amanda will be starting a second subject master’s in Medieval Studies through the University of York, where she was offered an Academic Excellence scholarship through their Centre for Medieval Studies. Amanda aspires to work in a university special collections/rare books library as a curator/instructional librarian and is entertaining future education at the doctoral level.

Current Certificate Students

The students profiled below are currently completing the Graduate Certificate in Global Medieval Studies program. They are listed by academic year of acceptance into the Certificate program.

2025-26

Jiakai Zhang (Classics)

Jiakai Zhang is a PhD student in Classics at UCLA. His current project explores the reception of Horace in Matteo Ricci’s Xiqin Qiyi (1601), a collection of Christian songs adapted for the Ming court in China. By examining the work’s literary and cultural context in both late Renaissance Italy and Ming China, the project reveals how Ricci’s adaptations positioned Christian doctrine as both familiar and foreign to Chinese and Greco-Roman traditions, highlighting a complex debate between Horatian, Christian, and Neo-Confucian ideals of life.

2023-24

 Miranda Heaner (European Languages and Transcultural Studies)

Miranda Heaner is a PhD student in the French and Francophone Studies section of the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at UCLA. She previously received a BA in French and International Studies from Northwestern University and a MA in French from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her master’s thesis, Échos Alsaciens dans la culture cadienne, focused on the understudied impact of Alsatian migration to southwest Louisiana (commonly known as Acadiana) and the enduring traces that this migratory movement left on rural Mardi Gras and Christmastime cultural practices. Her 2024 Graduate Student Research Mentorship summer research analyzes tri-regional upper Rhine wintertime noisemaking traditions. She is currently preparing to begin her dissertation research.

2022-23
Alex Casteel (Archaeology)

Alex Casteel is a PhD student at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA. Although Alex’s earliest archaeological fieldwork was in South America, he examined possible Viking-Age artefacts at a re-used broch in Orkney for his Bachelor’s thesis after an interest in the synergy of material and textual information led him toward Norse archaeology, mythology, and Old Norse sagas. He recently completed his MA/MPhil in Iceland and Norway with a thesis that discussed the “Wind of the Giantess” skaldic kenning, which opened his eyes to ontological difference. His transdisciplinary research now focuses on the early settlers of the Mosfell Valley in Iceland through the lens of the built landscape. By thinking of them as embodied participants in a material and more-than-human ecology with vast building potential, he will consider architectural construction and experiencing across a continuum from the actual to the virtual through senses, emotion, affect, and more. Alex has worked as a CMRS-CEGS Graduate Student Research under the mentorship of CMRS-CEGS faculty member Jesse Byock (ELTS, Scandinavian, UCLA). He has also awarded a CMRS-CEGS Research and Study Travel Grant to support his archaeological research in Iceland during the summer of 2023.

Moises Machuca (Comparative Literature)

Moises Machuca is a PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. He received his BA in Literature and Philosophy from UCSC in 2020. His research focuses on early (pre) colonial European and American Indian encounters/conflicts. He is interested in how Early Modern emotions helped shape European colonial powers, how American Indians thought of each other, and how emotions led to suspicion, violence, peace, and loyalty.

2021-22 

Julie Ershadi (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)

Julie Ershadi is a graduate student in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Studies at UCLA. She has a BA in Linguistics & Languages and Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College. Her research interests include Persian linguistics, Persian literary diachrony, endangered languages and contemporary Iranian-American issues. Her recent research has focused on the major poets of the Mongol or Ilkhanid period in premodern Persian literary history period, many of whom have not been studied in any depth outside of Iran. Their works manifested not only as art but as tools, mediated by aesthetics, for social and political exchange among a monarch and his or her subjects and rivals. In order to effectively communicate in the emergent Perso-Mongol milieu, poets wrote verses that reflected the cultural, political, and linguistic points of contact between the two societies. Important questions remain surrounding the use of lyric and panegyric poetry in influencing the often fraught sociopolitical atmosphere of the time.

Jodie Miller (European Languages and Transcultural Studies, French)

Jodie Miller is a Ph.D. candidate in the French section of the department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at UCLA. Her dissertation focuses on the Old French Roman de Renart, its translations in medieval Europe, and also considers convergences with the Kalila and Dimna fables. She is specifically interested in the trial scenes of the fox, Renart, and the jackal, Dimna, and the indirect influence of Kalila and Dimna on the Roman de Renart during its transmission across the Mediterranean and into medieval Europe.