Battle Plan for Medieval Pedagogy
The Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts and the Center for Integrative Studies are pleased to announce the recipients of “Magnus the Good” Awards for 2006. These awards, funded by an endowment established by friends of the St. Olaf Paracollege, seek to encourage undergraduate research in student-faculty collaborations, and to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of St. Olaf students and faculty.
The selection committee made an award in the amount of $1,200.
War and Society
Student Emelie Heltsley ’07 and Professor Timothy Howe (History) received an award to support their project, “Battle Plan for Medieval Pedagogy”. Heltsley and Howe will look extensively at resource on medieval conflict in an effort to better explain the information to students. The project will study the strong influence of the Medieval era and warfare on the development of societies.
“Medieval battle has always thrilled me. I remember watching Disney’s Robin Hood countless times as a child, and being fascinated with knights, swords, battlefields, and other aspects of the Medieval era. As I continued to grow and expand my study outside of the realm of Disney, I found myself more and more intrigued with the finer details of Medieval battles themselves; how they were planned, who planned the conflicts, who fought in them, and how long the battles lasted. While studying the general mechanics of warfare, I realized that I was unintentionally ignoring the important interactions between war and society. While the technical questions relating to warfare still pique my interest, the social impact of war poses equally fascinating issues: the mixing of social classes on the battlefield, various technologies that were invented and perfected for the purposes of war, and the influence of religious institutions on medieval conflicts.”
