The M. A. program in European Thought and Culture, provides students with a rigorous course of study in the foundational philosophical texts and cultural products in literature and the arts produced in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. The one-year program consists of nine courses, culminating in either a comprehensive examination or a thesis. B.A. students at UCI can also get a head start on the program by taking the core course sequence in their senior year. Financial support is available on a competitive basis. The program looks to both the distant and recent history of Europe to help us understand the modern world. Major developments in the European tradition include the transition from medieval to early modern modes of organizing intellectual, social, and political life, urbanization, the Reformation and the wars of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries, the formation of the nation-state, colonialism, the rise of modern science, the Enlightenment, pre-modern, early modern, and modern political revolutions, concepts of sovereignty, the development of the modern notions of individual subjectivity, agency,and autonomy, as well as modernist and postmodernist critiques of this tradition.