The faculty hosted a number of events as part of the University’s alumni weekend, Meeting Minds Global 2021, from 12-17 April.
In the first event, Philip Ross Bullock and Laura Tunbridge (of the Faculty of Music) discussed their new co-edited book, Song Beyond the Nation: Translation, Transnationalism, Performance, and explored the importance of languages to the academic study of music, as well as their various collaborations with the worlds of broadcasting and the performing arts.
Professor Henrike Lähnemann and Emma Huber talked about how we use books from the Taylorian to teach History of the Book, about the current projects for the Taylor Editions and the development of Digital Humanities elements for the course.
The third event was a talk by Dr Mary Boyle, exploring three attempts to child-proof the thirteenth-century Nibelungenlied. This medieval epic features some staple ingredients of children’s stories: knights, a princess, a dragon, treasure. It also contains some distinctly non-child-friendly aspects, not least a large amount of graphic violence. Undeterred, several nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century writers set about adapting it for English-speaking children.
In the fourth talk, Dr Alexandra Lloyd introduced the life and legacy of Sophie Scholl, a 21 year-old German student who was executed for her part in the White Rose resistance circle. In the early 1940s, the White Rose secretly wrote and distributed pamphlets calling on Germans to resist Hitler. The talk included excerpts from Sophie Scholl’s writings, translated by undergraduate students at Oxford.
The fifth talk saw Dr Charlotte Ryland introducing the Queen’s College Translation Exchange, an innovative outreach centre bringing international literature and translation to people of all ages.
In the final event, Patrick McGuinness discussed his new book about an old city, Real Oxford. The real Oxford is rarely seen, even by those who live here: industrial Oxford, Oxford the car city, Oxford the midlands city, with its factories and breweries, wharves and stations. There's Oxford's venerable football history and its unexpectedly radical politics. There's high-rise Oxford as well as honeyed stone and High Table Oxford. There's European Oxford, Windrush Oxford, Cavalier and Roundhead Oxford. There's a global Oxford and a local Oxford. And there's Oxford's own population – the artisans, tradespeople and urban working-class whose city-centre suburbs were demolished.
All the presentations can now be found on the faculty’s youtube channel, for those who were not able to join the live events.