All Modern Languages tests for undergraduate entry are now pre-interview, and will take place in schools on 2 November 2011. For full information about which tests you need to take for which combinations of subject (including Joint Schools), see http://www.admissions.ox.ac.uk/tests/languages. This link will also give you information on how to register for pre-interview tests.
If you have questions about which tests you should take, please contact the University Undergraduate Admissions Office.
Read all the latest news from the faculty, or visit our Events section to see what's on.
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If you are interested in studying Modern Languages at Oxford, and would like to get a taster of what it would be like, why not apply to take part in a UNIQ Summer School?
UNIQ Summer schools are for UK students from state schools, currently studying for AS Levels (lower sixth form). The courses for 2012 will include French, German, Spanish and a new course in Beginners’ Languages. As well as engaging in an intense academic programme which will give you a good idea of what studying at Oxford is like, you'll have the opportunity to take part in a varied social programme including theatre trips, sports activities, and drama workshops.
For more information and to make an application, please visit http://www.ox.ac.uk/uniq
Note that applications for UNIQ Summer Schools close on 23 February 2012.
A new lecture list service is available for staff and students at:
https://hermes2.mml.ox.ac.uk/nownext/
This page shows what is currently happening in a lecture room until about 10-15 minutes before the next lecture - when it will show what is going to start.
This displays particularly well on smart-phones in landscape.
Following on from the huge success of The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Modern Languages Faculty is celebrating the appearance of Nicola Gardini’s fourth novel, Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd.
Both McGuinness, Professor of French Literature, and Gardini, University Lecturer in Italian Literature, are also well known poets. Gardini has published six collections of verse and McGuinness two, one of which has been translated into Italian. Both are, of course, also held in high regard as literary critics and scholars. The two authors will be in conversation with each other and reading from their novels in the Taylorian Hall at 5.00 pm on Tuesday, 6 March, 2012.
Alex Rawlings, a second-year student reading German and Russian at St Catherine's College, has won a national competition to find the UK's most multilingual student. To hear him speak all eleven languages, go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17107435
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at Oxford University is looking for budding film enthusiasts in Years 10-11 and 12-13 to show their imaginative engagement with the world of French cinema. To enter the competition, students in each age group are asked to re-write the ending of a film in no more than 1500 words (in English).
Following the success of the Half-Term Admissions talks, tutors will be offering a talk on studying and applying for Modern Languages degree courses at Oxford on Thursday 12 April at 2pm. There will be a formal presentation followed by time for questions. Please complete a booking form in order to attend this event: full details are available at:
http://www.admissions.ox.ac.uk/talks
With over 50 entries from across 32 schools, the Medieval & Modern Languages Faculty’s first French film essay competition yielded a very impressive range and richness of responses to the two set films: Le Grand Voyage (Years 10-11) and On connaît la chanson (Years 12-13). Entrants rewrote 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 number of further entries were offered special commendation. To read more about the rewritings of each film, click here.
The Medieval & Modern Languages Faculty congratulates all participants and expresses its gratitude to their teachers for supporting their entries. Particular thanks are offered to the French Embassy and to the Sir Robert Taylor Society for their generous sponsorship of the competition.
Six first year FHS students in the Russian sub-faculty have been awarded a prize by the Washington DC Russkii Mir foundation for their joint translation of a Vysotsky poem, 'She was in Paris'. You can read the original, plus their translation and the names of the six students here:
http://vvysotskyinenglish.blogspot.co.uk/p/she-was-in-paris.html
On Friday 4 May 2012 the Deputy Director of the Bodleian, Dr Richard Ovenden, launched the Early Modern Festival Books Database in the Divinity School in Oxford. The database is a freely available online resource to enable researchers to access more than three thousand descriptions in twelve languages of early modern festivals at courts and cities throughout Europe (http://festivals.mml.ox.ac.uk).
These works are often splendidly illustrated accounts of coronations, christenings and weddings, of tournaments, ballets, and operas and are a vital source of information for art historians, musicologists and historians of the period. Dr Ovenden commented: ‘How wonderful to be standing in a 15th century building, launching a 21st century research tool that will enable scholars to use 16th, 17th and 18th printed books!’
Fortunately Marie Antoinette and Maria Amalia, Queen of Naples (Charlotte Marshall of St Catherine’s and Nicola Deboys of Pembroke, both Second Year students of German sole, were able to attend.
A new website has been launched for the European Humanities Research Centre (EHRC) at Oxford.
The Third EHRC Cross-Faculty Seminar on Gender, sexuality and movement from the fin de siècle to the années folles will take place on Wednesday 6 June (7th week), 4 – 6 pm. Taylorian Main Hall.
Congratulations to Dr Francesco Manzini, Junior Research Fellow at Oriel College, who has won the 'Forum for Modern Languages Studies Essay Prize for 2012'.
The 2012 Forum Prize competition was on the subject of Literature and Hunger and Francesco Manzini wrote the winning essay: 'Nutrition, Hunger and Fasting: Spiritual and Material Naturalism in Zola and Huysmans'.
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/formod/forum_prize.html
Professor Cooper, Chair of the Faculty from 1 October 2012, carries the Olympic Torch in Oxford on 9 July 2012.
Professor Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly is Chair of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and a fellow of Exeter College, specialising in German literature and culture in the period 1450-1750. She has worked extensively on the culture of the European courts, on writing by women and on the representation of women in German literature from 1500 to the present.
Sir Adam Roberts, President of the Academy said: “The new Fellows, who come from 23 institutions across the UK, have outstanding expertise across the board – from social policy and government, to sign language and music. Our Fellows play a vital role in sustaining the Academy’s activities - from identifying excellence to be supported by research awards, to contributing to policy reports and speaking at the Academy’s public events. Their presence in the Academy will help it to sustain its support for research across the humanities and social sciences, and to inspire public interest in these disciplines.”
Registration is now open for the Sir Robert Taylor Society's annual conference which provides a unique forum for interaction between Oxford's Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty and teachers of MFL in secondary schools and colleges. This year's conference will take place at St Hilda's College.
The latest annual data from the University has shown once again the benefits of a Modern Languages degree in boosting graduate prospects. The Faculty's graduating students of summer 2010 have a higher percentage in employment or further study than the University average (93% > 87%), and an even smaller figure in unemployment. National data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency indicate, furthermore, that Modern Languages graduates have one of the highest rates of employment across all subject areas, exceeded only by medical disciplines and law.
For further information about career prospects for Modern Linguists, see: http://www.languageswork.org.uk
The University has its own Careers Service for guiding and supporting students in their future planning:
http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk
A new bursary has been established to provide financial assistance for undergraduates to attend a course in a South Slavonic language in the relevant country before taking it as a final-year option. The bursary is in memory of Anne Pennington who made invaluable contributions to Russian and Slavonic Studies at Oxford. More information about the bursary can be found here:
http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/pennington
The Oxford German Network launched its website on 26 September 2012, European Day of Languages.
http://www.oxford-german-network.ox.ac.uk
The network is an initiative of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, with the support of the Founding Partners Jesus College, Oxford, Magdalen College School, Oxford, and BMW Group Plant Oxford. It is designed to encourage and promote the study and enjoyment of German-language culture in the Oxford area and beyond, and will work closely with schools of all types as well as university departments, organisations and companies at a local and national level.
Alongside the website, the network's core activities will include facilitating workshops and events for learners of German and running a national competition: the Oxford German Olympiad.
Professor Patrick McGuinness has the won the 2012 Writers Guild Award for Best Fiction for his book The Last Hundred Days.
Miss Amy Cowan (Hertford College) has won the 2012 R.H. Gapper Undergraduate Essay Prize for her essay on the topic: 'A la recherche du temps perdu has been described as an epistemological quest. Explain and exemplify what this might mean.' The essay was judged outstanding by both the initial readers in the first round, and by the second round panel of judges.
The prize is awarded by the Society for French Studies for an essay in English or French, of between 2,000 and 5,000 words, on any subject within the scope of French studies. The award is for outstanding academic merit at undergraduate level, and the judges are a subcommittee of the Trustees of the Society for French Studies.
Miss Jessica Benhamou (St Hugh's College), must also be congratulated as being among the shortlist of six considered in the second round.
The Modern Language Association of America has awarded its twentieth annual Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies to Frédérique Aït-Touati, of the University of Oxford, Saint John’s College, for her book Fictions of the Cosmos: Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century, published by the University of Chicago Press. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work that is written by a member of the association and that involves at least two literatures.
More information can be found here.