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An Online Portal into the Medieval World

Image courtesy of the Walters Art Museum.

CHASS Assistant Professor of English Tim Stinson and Dot Porter, a librarian at Indiana University, are using a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch an online resource for medieval subjects, including literature, history, theology, architecture, art history and philosophy. Creation of a centralized search engine for medieval materials will make research infinitely easier for scholars and others interested in the distant past.

At present, for example, those interested in studying the medieval era might need to visit dozens of different sites to search for documents related to their research topics, from King Arthur to church history to the Hundred Years’ War.

The new site, which is part of Stinson’s larger project called the Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA), will allow users to search all of these sites at once – streamlining the research process and hopefully bringing to light resources a scholar may have otherwise missed. The site is scheduled to launch by the end of the year, and will initially cover Europe and the Mediterranean world from roughly 450 A.D. to 1450 A.D.

Read the full story on NC State’s research blog, The Abstract.