There are a number of ways in which students in medieval history can expect to gain teaching experience in their years at the University of Chicago. In medieval European, Byzantine, and Russian history, students who have completed their oral field exams may apply to serve as interns in the undergraduate College Core sequence "The History of European Civilization." This three-quarter documents-based sequence is taught in small discussion sections of 20-22 students; depending on the section, interns assist faculty in meeting with students, evaluating assignments, and conducting discussions. Students in Russian history may also serve as course assistants in "Introduction to Russian Civilization," and students in Middle Eastern and Islamic history may serve as course assistants in "Introduction to Islamic Civilization." In addition, undergraduate lecture courses sometimes require course assistants, if enrollments exceed 25.
Advanced graduates who have served as interns or course assistants may apply to lead their own section in the appropriate Civilization sequence. In the History department, advanced graduates may also apply to serve as preceptors for the undergraduate B.A. seminar and to teach courses of their own design through the Von Holst Prize Lectureship program. Recent History graduate students have also served as preceptors for the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences and as interns in the Little Red Schoolhouse Writing Program. Advanced graduate students are also eligible to offer courses of their own design through the Graham School of General Studies. There are also regularly opportunities for advanced graduates to serve as visiting lecturers at other institutions in the Chicago area, such as Chicago State University, Columbia College, DePaul University, and Dominican University.
Practical and theoretical teacher training for graduate students across the University is available through the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Medievalists studying at the University of Chicago, as, indeed, elsewhere in North America, should expect to spend at least part of their time as graduate students working in archives or libraries in or the Middle East. Much of their initial work, however, will be well-served by the extensive collection of published and microfilmed primary sources and scholarly studies housed at the Regenstein Library and, for students of Islam and the Middle East, at The Oriental Institute. The Regenstein Library's microform collection is especially rich, a handlist of which is available on-line (see Frank Conway, "Guide to Microform and CD-Rom Sources for History and Political Science in the University of Chicago Library").
Students needing to consult manuscript catalogues for libraries in Europe will find these available in the Manuscripts Search Room in the Regenstein's Department of Special Collections; students working with Islamic materials will find these and other important primary sources available in the Oriental Institute Research Archives. The Regenstein Library's Department of Special Collections also houses a number of important medieval manuscripts, including a large collection of Byzantine New Testament Bibles. Some of the many manuscripts acquired in 1891 by William Rainey Harper as part of the Berlin Collection include a fifteenth-century Italian Receptarium de medicinis containing recipes and remedies for numerous everyday ailments; a fifteenth-century copy of Blasius of Parma's (d. 1416) anti-Aristotelian Questiones super libro methaurorum; an early fifteenth-century Book of Hours following the Use of Châlons-sur-Marne; a fifteenth-century German book of devotions containing an allegory concerning Christ and the soul, with the human body allegorized as a castle; and an early sixteenth-century Altvaterbuch printed by Johann Grüninger in Strassburg. Students of late medieval English history will find the Sir Nicholas Bacon collection of manorial documents and the records of the projects directed in the 1940s by John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert on the life and works of Geoffrey Chaucer especially interesting. The Manuscripts Search Room also houses a number of important manuscript facsimiles, along with guides to the paleography of medieval works.
For more extensive manuscript work, students should consult in addition the catalogues and collections at the The Newberry Library and the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections at Northwestern University. For students of medieval monasticism, the microfilm collection housed at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library at St. John's University, in Collegeville, Minnesota, is indispensable; likewise, the microfilm collection of the Vatican Film Library at St. Louis University, in St. Louis, for students of the monasticism, the papacy and medieval Christendom more generally.
As more and more materials are made available digitally and on-line through databases such as the Chicago-based ARTFL Project, it is essential for students to stay abreast of the various on-line directories. Good places to start for medievalists include the various subject pages maintained by the librarians at the Regenstein, including the History Page, the Judaica and Hebraica Page, the Slavic and East European Studies Page, and the Middle East Page. RLG's Archival Resources, available through the Library's electronic resources page, provides a searchable catalogue of holdings in libraries and other repositories throughout the world. Databases of more specific interest for students working in medieval European history include the bibliographical databases at Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance and the International Medieval Bibliography; and the indexes at The Labyrinth, ORB: The On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies, Netserf: The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources, and The WWW-VL History Index: Medieval Europe. For those planning syllabi in medieval history, the Internet Medieval Sourcebook is a treasure-trove with links to similar on-line sourcebooks in Islamic, ancient and modern European history.