Dr Thibaut Maus de Rolley, a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, has just been awarded a ‘Prix solennel de la Chancellerie des Universités de Paris’ for his doctoral thesis, a book version of which is forthcoming from Droz in 2011 under the title Élévations: l'écriture du voyage aérien à la Renaissance.

The editors of Oxford German Studies are pleased to announce that digitisation of the entire run of OGS is now complete.

Please note, the following information outlines an internal pre-application selection process. It is not authorisation to make an application to the Leverhulme Trust through this Institution.

Professor Tom Earle has been elected a corresponding fellow of the Academia das Ciências de Lisboa - Classe de Letras. More information about the Academia can be found at:

http://www.acad-ciencias.pt/

The Faculty is sad to announce the death of Margaret Malpas in a nursing home on Sunday 23 January. Margaret had been associated with the Sub-Faculty of French for a great many years and was most recently a Lecturer at Hertford College, and taught at Keble, Pembroke, St. Edmund Hall & Trinity Colleges, amongst others. Margaret’s contribution to the teaching of language and linguistics has been extensive and many of her former students will remember her with affection. Condolences are extended to Margaret’s family; information about funeral arrangements will be circulated in due course.

Tom Earle (Professor of Portuguese in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages) has obtained several paperback copies of his book Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Ed T. F. Earle, University of Oxford and K. J. P. Lowe, Queen Mary, University of London) which he would like to donate to University Libraries in Africa. The aim is to distribute these books by means of personal contacts rather than by risking them to the vagaries of the postal system. If any colleagues have links with, or are planning trips to, any African countries over the next few months, please contact Professor Earle (Thomas.earle@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) to obtain a copy of the book to take with you. Copies have already been distributed to the University of Ghana in Accra, and to Chancellor College in Zomba, Malawi.

Further details of the book can be found on:

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item5735921/?site_locale=en_GB

The Faculty regrets to announce the death on 22 February 2011 of Dr Gilbert McKay, a retired member of the German Sub-Faculty, and emeritus fellow of St Peter's.

More information regarding arrangements will follow. Our condolences go to his family, friends, and former colleagues.

The 2011 Sylvia Naish Lecture will be held on Thursday, 24 March 2011 and will be given by Alexandra Lloyd (Wadham College, Oxford) on 'Zeitzeugen' and 'Sachzeugen': the Physical Legacy of Third Reich Childhood.

The Sylvia Naish Lectures were launched in memory of Sylvia Naish, an accomplished linguist, translator, Friend of Germanic Studies and benefactor of the former Institute of Germanic Studies.

Each year, research students registered for higher degrees in the field of Germanic studies at Universities in the United Kingdom are invited to submit proposals for the next lecture. The event forms part of the Institute’s programme of activities, open to the public. The theme of the lecture should be related to the student’s topic of research. Modest travel and/or accommodation expenses as appropriate will be covered by the Sylvia Naish Bequest. The lecture is published in abridged form in the next issue of the Newsletter, annual magazine of the Friends of Germanic Studies.

More information can be found at:

The Sub-Faculty of Italian is pleased to announce the Giacomo da Lentini Prize for the best translation of an Italian sonnet into English

Poster (doc)

Each candidate is allowed TWO entries, which can be selected from ANY period of Italian literature. Entries should be sent, in hard copy, to Dr. E. Tandello at Christ Church - please NO electronic entries, unless you happen to be a third-year student currently abroad.

For any information about the prize, and conditions of entry, please contact Ela Tandello at Christ Church.

The Faculty regrets to announce the death of Paul Foote on 1 March 2011 in the John Radcliffe Hospital. Mr Foote was University Lecturer in Russian from 1954 until his retirement in 1993, and Fellow and Praelector in Russian at Queen's from 1964 until his retirement (and latterly an Emeritus Fellow).

More information regarding arrangements will follow. Our condolences go to his family, friends, and former colleagues.

A memorial service for Gudrun Loftus, Senior Language Instructor in German, will take place in St John's Chapel on Friday 6 May 2011, 11am, followed by a reception in the Garden Quad Reception Room, St John's College.

All friends, colleagues, and students past and present are welcome to attend (there is no need to RSVP).

A memorial service for Paul Foote will be held on Saturday, 11 June at 3 pm in The Queen's College Chapel.

The new version of Weblearn is now available to all Faculty staff and students. All the up-to-date course resources have been migrated from 'old' Weblearn to the new version which is available at:

https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/humdiv/modlang

The old site is now an archive and no new material will be added to it.

In addition, all the information relating to current students on the Faculty website has been moved to Weblearn. This includes handbooks, exam information and year abroad information.

Professor McGuinness is made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres

Patrick McGuinness, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford has been made Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in recognition of his creative writing. The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, established in 1957, rewards “artists who have significantly contributed to the development of art and literature in France and in the rest of the world.”

Professor McGuinness has written two books of poems - The Canals of Mars (2004) and Jilted City (2010), both published by Carcanet – which have been translated into several languages and have appeared, translated by Gilles Ortlieb, in French poetry journals, notably Théodore Balmoral. His edition of Charles Dantzig's Collected Poems was published by Grasset last year.

His novel - The Last Hundred Days - about the downfall of the Ceausescu regime in Romania is due for publication later this month, and he is working on a book on Poetry and Radical Politics in fin de siècle France.

The first published novel by Patrick McGuinness, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction for 2011. 'The Last Hundred Days' was inspired by his experience of the 1989 Romanian revolution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-14307727

I am a journalist and former Oxford University student and I would like to forward you details about internship opportunities for MFL students at EU Radio Nantes. I think this could be a great opportunity for students on their year abroad. They can come to France for 4-6 months and work at a European radio station. They must be able to speak and write French well, though they do not necessarily need to be bilingual in the strict sense of the word. This is a rigorous and serious journalism opportunity for people who are interested in Europe. It's a great way for students to perfect their French and they will be trained to be a European radio journalist through hands on work.

Please find attached the details of the internship, as well as an application pack. Internships are available from March and from September 2010.

Please email year-abroad@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk to request further information.

Kind regards,

Victoria Sill
(Hertford College 2004)

The committee's citation for the honorable mention reads:

"Andrew Kahn has produced an extremely erudite study of Pushkin's lyrics, in which he explores and elucidates the intellectual context for these works. Very well read in the contemporary scholarship on English and continental Romanticism, he reveals the extent of Pushkin's profound engagement with the literary and cultural movements of his day. The volume is imaginatively organized around a set of themes that shed light on how Russia's greatest poet formed and developed his ideas about such matters as the role of inspiration in creativity, the classical and the Romantic, the question of commercial success for the artist, concepts of the hero, and the confrontation with mortality."

Andrew Kahn is university reader in Russian at the University of Oxford, fellow at Saint Edmund Hall, and lecturer at Queen's College. He is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Pushkin and translator of Nicolai Karamzin, Letters of a Russian Traveler. His articles have appeared in journals such as Stanford Slavic Studies, Révue des Études Slaves, and EMF and books such as Remapping the Rise...

Colleagues and students will be saddened to learn of the death of Professor Elizabeth Fallaize on 6 December 2009. Please follow the links to see the obituaries that appeared in the national press.

The Times, 06/01/10, p54
Obituary: “Elizabeth Fallaize was an international authority on the work of Simone de Beauvoir as well as a leading figure in French studies, a much loved teacher and mentor, and from 2005 to 2008 a highly effective Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Oxford.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6976887.ece

The Guardian, p.20, 04/01/2010, Judith Still
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/03/simonedebeauvoir-oxforduniversity

The University of Oxford is running a brand new summer school which is open to UK state school students currently in the lower sixth form. Successful applicants to the UNIQ summer school will enjoy a week in Oxford this July, living in one of the Oxford colleges and studying their chosen subject. 500 places are available to bright, motivated and enthusiastic students who would like the chance to see what studying and living in Oxford is really like. See http://www.ox.ac.uk/uniq for full details. There's an online brochure which tells you all about the summer school and the application process.

The Society for French Studies has announced the results of the 2009 Postgraduate Gapper Essay Prize. The winner is:

‘Skinner in Tandem: Against Methodological “Servitude Volontaire”’ by Tanya Raie Filer (University of Oxford)

The award includes a cash prize of £750 and expenses-paid travel to the next annual conference.