A Medieval and Renaissance festival will be held at Circle Park this Friday, Sept. 14 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The festival will incorporate Medieval and Renaissance culture. It will feature entertainment, music, costumes, and crafts. It is also open to the general public.

Fall 2007 has been named the Medieval and Renaissance Semester at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and will contain programming made possible, in part, by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Dr. Robert Bast, Riggsby Director of the Marco Institute and Associate Professor of History, is responsible for coordinating the festival's cooperation with faculty from other departments. Chancellor Loren Crabtree created the themed semester concept, which is helped by both the Marco Institute and the National Endowment for the Humanities' (NEH) $3 million Challenge Grant recently awarded to the University of Tennessee.

"Marco's stature as a research institute has been growing nationally and internationally, and the university is pleased to highlight its success with a semester devoted to the Medieval and Renaissance era. We hope the campus and community will take advantage of the many events to learn more about this time in history and UT's efforts to study it," Crabtree said in a recent press release about the themed semester.

"The emphasis was created as part of Ready for the World," said University of Tennessee Communications, "a long-term initiative at UT to better prepare students to compete in a global economy by exposure to more international and intercultural experiences."

This Friday's festival is the preliminary event of a semester which will feature musical and dramatic performances, scholarly workshops, and an art exhibit.