Twenty-five years since the fall of the Berlin Wall the poet Volker Braun will give a special reading of old and new work and answer questions with David Constantine and Karen Leeder on Tuesday 11 Nov. at 5pm, in the Seminar Room, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road.
This will be followed by a reception to mark the launch of Rubble Flora: Selected Poems (2014), to which everyone is welcome. This is the first collection of Braun’s poetry in English and spans 50 years of poems.
Spaces are limited and will be on a strictly first come first served basis. Please register with karen.leeder@new.ox.ac.uk if you wish to attend.
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The French schools liaison blog, Adventures on the Bookshelf, is celebrating its first anniversary this week, and also its quarter-of-a-millionth page-view. Over the last twelve months it's grown from a trickle of interest at first, to now welcoming up to 6000 visitors a day, and having readers in over 100 countries (including Azerbaidjan, Brunei and Tokelau). A look back at some of its greatest hits.
An Oxford DPhil student (Sarah Hickmott, Merton) has won the 2014 R. H. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize, accorded by the Society for French Studies, for an essay titled ‘(En) Corps Sonore’, an interdisciplinary reflection on the question of listening in the work of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The prize includes an award of £750 and expenses-paid travel to the Annual Conference of the Society.
The joint runners-up for this year’s award included another Oxford postgraduate, Emma Claussen (St John's), along with Edmund Birch (Cambridge).
In 2013 an Oxford undergraduate Dulcie fforde (SEH) won another major prize accorded by the Society for French Studies, the R.H. Gapper Undergraduate Essay Competition. The 2014 prize is yet to be accorded.
Wolfson is a postgraduate college and proposes to make one election to a Stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship for three years starting in October 2013.
Wolfson College provides a lively interdisciplinary environment for the study of the Humanities. Alongside researchers in History, Classics, English and Oriental Studies, there is a thriving postgraduate and academic community of Modern Linguists. Wolfson now proposes to create a Stipendiary Research Fellowship in 'Literature in European Languages', broadly defined as research into the literary cultures created in the languages of Europe (excluding English), wherever those cultures might flourish geographically. Areas of study could include the texts (or
authors) of prose, poetry or drama, from the medieval period to the present day, from manuscripts to electronic media, and could extend to embrace a variety of approaches including, for example, thematic concerns, genre definition, life-writing or performance.
For more information and an application form, click here.
Belinda Jack has been elected as the next Gresham Professor of Rhetoric. She joins a distinguished roster — her predecessors in this position include Cecil Day-Lewis, William Empson, Jan Kott, and Stephen Spender.
Further details of Gresham College and the Professorship of Rhetoric can be found at:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/gresham-professor-of-rhetoric
Oxford University has been ranked first for Modern Languages in the QS World Rankings for 2012-13, overtaking Harvard University who had the top spot last year. Professor Richard Cooper, Chair of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, said:
This is a powerful and gratifying endorsement of the breadth of our syllabus in Modern Languages, the quality of our students, both undergraduate and graduate, of our research libraries, and above all of the excellence and dedication in teaching and research of the members of our Faculty.
More information on the rankings can be found here:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2013/modern-languages
Professor Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, FBA, learned on 3 May 2013 that her application for a collaborative research grant to HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) was one of 18 successful projects. The 3-year grant of almost 1 million Euros will enable her to work with colleagues in Germany, Poland and Sweden on ‘Marrying Cultures: Queens Consort and European Identities 1500-1800’. The focus of the project is the foreign consort as agent of cultural transfer. Among the case studies to be investigated are the Polish princess Katarzyna Jagiellonka, Duchess of Finland and Queen of Sweden (1526-83); Hedwig Eleonora, Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp and Queen of Sweden (1636-1715); the Portuguese princess Catarina of Braganza, Queen of Great Britain (1638-1705); and Maria Amalia, Princess of Saxony, Queen of the Two Sicilies and Queen of Spain (1724-1760).
A series of programmes on France Culture about the study of and research in philosophy at Oxford, featuring interviews with a selection of tutors on topics including John Locke, philosophy of language, analytic philosophy, and philosophy of mind. The programmes are broadcast 3-6 June, with podcasts downloadable from the France Culture website.
A feast of narrative imagination and directorial invention!
With 179 entries from across 42 schools, the University of Oxford’s second French film essay competition received over three times more entries than in 2012, and from a greater number of schools and colleges. Equal to last year, though, was the very impressive range and richness of responses to the two set films: Comme une image (Years 10-11) and Un air de famille (Years 12-13). Entrants re-wrote the closing chapter, picking up narrative threads left hanging by each film’s ambiguous ending. So rich were the responses that, in addition to the winner and runner-up in each category, a selection of further entries were offered special commendation. To read more about the re-writings of each film, click here.
Professor Viala's Histoire de la littérature – Le Moyen Âge which is box-set of 5 CDs with readings by Daniel Mesguich, won the "Coup de cœur" 2013 de l'Académie Charles Cros/Union européenne des Maisons de la poésie. He and Daniel were awarded the prize at a ceremony on Sunday 9 June at the Marché de la Poésie in the Place Saint-Sulpice.
More information can be found here.
On Tuesday 18 June languages teachers from across Oxfordshire joined languages lecturers from Oxford University to share their expertise in Oxford’s first ever MFL teachmeet. A teachmeet is a bit like a conference but each presentation lasts for a short period of time – usually two or five minutes. Each presenter explains an activity or technique which has worked well for them. It’s about sharing best practice, inspiring others and making connections with other educators.
The event was organised by Helen Swift, University Lecturer in Medieval French and Schools Liaison Officer for the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, and the heads of languages in the OCL (Oxford City Learning) schools: Cheney, Wheatley Park, Matthew Arnold, St. Gregory The Great and Oxford Spires. These schools work together to share ideas, challenge and support each other. 35 teachers and lecturers attended the event. Most of the teachers were from OCL schools but there were also representatives from Henry Box, Bartholomew and Didcot Girls.
Professor Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French in the Faculty of Mediæval and Modern Languages at Oxford and Emeritus Research Fellow of St John’s, is to be congratulated on being appointed CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Literary Scholarship. Author of major works of criticism, including The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (1979), Recognitions: a Study in Poetics (1988), Pré-Histoires (1999, 2001) and, most recently, Mignon’s Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century (2011), Professor Cave was recognised by the award of the International Balzan Prize (2009) “for his outstanding contributions to a new understanding of Renaissance literature and of the influence of Aristotelian poetics in modern European literature”. He used the prize to set up a research project, the Balzan Interdisciplinary Seminar, based at the St John’s College Research Centre, to address the question “What are the nature and value of literature as an object of knowledge in the interdisciplinary spectrum?” The Modern Languages Faculty is delighted at...
The impact of the introduction of the EBacc performance measure can be felt in this year's GCSE numbers, with modern foreign languages up by 15.8%.
French numbers are up from 153,436 to 177,288 (up 15.5%). German up from 57,547 to 62,932 (up 9.4%). Spanish up from 72,606 to 91,315 (up 25.8%). Other languages up from 29,843 to 31,368 (up 5.1%).
The figures show a change in market share: Spanish now represents over a quarter of GCSE entries (25.2%), taking one percentage point each from German (17.3%) and other languages (8.6%), while French retains just under half of total entries (48.9%).
Modern Languages at University
A letter to the TImes Higher Education by Jim Coleman, Chair of the University Council of Modern Languages, on degree-level language uptake.
The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities – Taylor Institution
November 1-2, 2013Conveners: Martin McLaughlin and Javier Muñoz-Basols
The first of three annual EHRC workshops on translation will be held on 1-2 November 2013 in TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities), Woodstock Rd, and in the Taylor Institution, St Giles.
Conveners: Martin McLaughlin and Javier Muñoz-Basols, with the assistance of Dr Elisabetta Tarantino
writing brecht is an international research and translation project devoted to extending and developing the corpus of Brecht’s works in English, led by Tom Kuhn. It incorporates a major AHRC-funded project, ‘Brecht into English’, which proposes a parallel critical appraisal of the transmission of Brecht’s writings and ideas and a historical assessment of the reception of Brecht in the English-speaking world. ... more information
There will also be a cultural programme of workshops, performances and recitals starting with:
Inaugural Symposium
Friday 15 November 2013
2pm-6pm
Maplethorpe Seminar Room, St Hugh's College, Oxford.... more information
Bertolt Brecht - Songs of Exile and War
Friday 15 November 2013
7pm-8.15pm (bar from 6.15pm)
Dr Neil Kenny's workshop 'Researching and Writing a Thesis: Problems, Method' is designed for the Faculty's DPhil students. All are welcome to attend, at any stage of the year, whatever year they are in, and whether or not they attended in previous years. Over the year we discuss a wide range of problems, techniques, and methods that tend to arise in both the researching and the writing of the kinds of doctorates that are done within the Faculty (with the exception of linguistics, to which the workshop is less well geared).
Each week includes a short presentation (maximum 15 minutes) by a student, that describes how their project came about, its current state, and some of the problems and challenges arising. Presentations do not go into specialist detail; they are not like ones given at a research seminar. Dr Kenny does not give feedback of a specialist nature; he makes clear to students that, in the unlikely event that he inadvertently contradicts a supervisor's advice, they should follow the latter. Apart from perhaps giving one presentation during the year, students do no other preparation: they just turn up.
An Oxford undergraduate, Dulcie fforde (SEH), has won the prize in the 2013 R.H.Gapper Undergradute Essay Competition for the Society of French Studies. The subject of her essay was ‘“L’image n’a pas de sens propre” (Compagnon). Discuss the pertinence of this claim in relation to Renaissance poetic practice.’ This is the second year in a row that an Oxford undergraduate has won this prize, for which essays are judged anonymously.
The schools liaison office in the Oxford French sub-faculty is proud to announce the launch of Adventures on the Bookshelf. A collaborative project run by the staff and students in French at the university, the blog is aimed at pupils and teachers of French in Years 11 to 13, and anyone with an interest in French language and culture who may be considering applying to study them at Oxford. It combines lively posts about French language, literature and culture, insights into student life, and reviews and recommendations for French books, films, apps and websites, along with information for prospective applicants about how the Oxford admissions process works from UCAS form to interview, and what you can do to prepare for it. Please do check it out, and let us know what you think.
Work will be commencing in the Taylor Institution on Monday (22 August 2011) to begin the process of improving accessibility in this building. The work will be carried out in several stages in order to avoid disruption during term-time. A brief outline of the main stages is given below, and further detailed information together with design and floor plans will be available online shortly.
Detailed information about the written work that candidates are required to submit as part of their application for Modern Languages (and Joint Schools with Modern Languages) may be found here.
If you have questions about what pieces of work to submit, please contact the Tutor for admissions at the college considering your application.