The GEMS Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies offers students an opportunity to enrich their academic work by pursuing early modern research across fields. Such an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship is consonant with the methodological and theoretical revolutions that have changed and invigorated academic research over the past few decades. The new relationships forged across disciplinary boundaries and the resulting push to interdisciplinarity have inspired the formation of GEMS and the development of a certificate in early modern studies that would complement and enrich disciplinary study in a traditional field.

Students in the GEMS Certificate Program are enthusiastic about the opportunity they have through the Certificate Program to pursue multidisciplinary research and to claim expertise in more than a single field. They find that their scholarship is inevitably enhanced and altered through study outside their home departments and that their work can become truly interdisciplinary in the process, approaching the creation of a "new object that belongs to no one," in the words of Roland Barthes.

The GEMS Graduate Certificate program is open to students who have been accepted into any University of Arizona graduate program as well as to students holding a graduate degree, such as secondary education teachers, who seek to expand their understanding of the early modern period. Applicants must also demonstrate competency in a second language appropriate to their field of study prior to being admitted to the Certificate Program. Students may apply at any time for admission in the following semester.

The GEMS Graduate Certificate requires 15 credit hours outside the student's home department, courses to be chosen from a list of eligible courses, including one required course -- Introduction to Early Modern Studies: Theories and Methodologies of Interdisciplinary Research (W S 610), offered every two years in the fall semester. The Director of GEMS (who serves as advisor to all Graduate Certificate Students) may approve additional courses for Certificate credit; the student must submit a request to the Director in writing explaining how the course will fulfill his/her academic goals, and the student's final project should be directly related to early modern studies. In addition, all Certificate Students will meet with the GEMS Director at least once a year for advising to discuss current and future academic plans and to develop their program of study.

Students making satisfactory academic progress in the GEMS Graduate Certificate Program will be given preferential consideration for Newberry Renaissance Consortium Grants to attend Newberry Library (Chicago) and Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC) programs and to work in those archives as well as for GEMS Graduate Student Travel Grants to participate in other programs, conferences, and archives. Students need not be presenting a paper at a conference to receive travel funding. GEMS also awards a one-year quarter-time graduate assistantship each year to a student pursuing the GEMS Graduate Certificate. Students earning the GEMS Interdisciplinary Certificate in Early Modern Studies may request a letter of recommendation from the Director of GEMS upon their graduation from the University.

Students may apply to the GEMS Interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate Program at any time for admission the following semester. To apply, print out the Application Form and send it along with a letter of interest to:

Kari Boyd McBride, Director
Group for Early Modern Studies
925 N. Tyndall Ave, 114D
P.O. Box 210438
University of Arizona
Tucson AZ 85721

Address any questions to kari@email.arizona.edu.