Honors Program Builds Trebuchet,
Performs Shakespeare Play

Students from the Medieval-Renaissance Honors seminar at the University of Mobile participated in one of two student-led projects on April 24 which capped the spring semester in an unusual way.

One group of honors students designed, built and fired a trebuchet -- a a medieval war engine -- at the golf driving range with lumber donated by Ford Lumber Co. Another group  staged a production of William Shakespeare's  "A Midsummer Night's Dream"  in the woods near the flag plaza.

The Honors Program at UM is centered on students working together to grapple with our intellectual and spiritual inheritance in the West, said Honors Program Director Dr. Doug Mitchell. This semester, they have struggled with Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, along with art and architecture from the Byzantine to the Baroque.

"But sometimes, you have to get outside the classroom," Mitchell explained.

"What we seek to do is to develop a kind of double-vision in our students, with the modern world transparent to the older Renaissance and Medieval worlds that lie beneath or within. Immersing oneself in
Augustine's "Confessions" or Dante's "Divine Comedy" is one way to gain such a vision, but during a semester of books and papers, a more effective way might be to confront and solve problems of medieval warcraft or Renaissance stagecraft," he said.

Last modified : Tuesday, May 5, 2009 0:03 AM
University of Mobile