Field trips
Most courses in medieval studies include at least one field trip.
For example in January 2012, as part of IDIS 306 Introduction to Medieval Studies, we visited the Waldo Library at Western Michigan University (WMU) in Kalamazoo. The Waldo Library houses a great collection of medieval manuscripts belonging to the Cistercian Institute at WMU. There were given on permanent loan by Dom Edmund Obrecht, a former abbot of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, in 1973.
Some of the highlights we got to see included a thirteenth-century copy of the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux and two beautifully illuminated liturgical manuscripts dating from the twelfth and thirteenth century.
