“Medieval Belief and Modern Secularity: Teaching the Middle Ages to Contemporary College Students”

This article presents pedagogical strategies to engage students of the modern, secular world with materials shaped by religious belief in the Middle Ages. Three specific challenges to the teaching of medieval culture are analyzed: resistance to the religious fervor surrounding miraculous objects such as relics, adherence to specific representations of the divine, and identification of the Middle Ages as a barbaric period marked by mistakes never to be repeated. Resonances between the Middle Ages and our contemporary world emerge, however, when questioning the structures, aesthetics, and audiences of both. By using medieval scenarios to formulate questions about modern problems, these pedagogical strategies seek to implicate students from both religious and secular backgrounds, and provoke interpretations of the Middle Ages that offer insight into the contemporary world.