Oxford term is nearly at an end and soon (we trust) many of our current and former students will be heading off to foreign lands to use and brush up on their languages! In the meantime, I hope this latest issue of the Oxford Polyglot will offer interest and entertainment wherever you read it. One huge piece of news came too late for us to provide any detailed information on it: the Humanities Division has received a staggering £150 million gift to fund the building of a new Humanities Centre (the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities) on part of the old Radcliffe Infirmary site. Our Faculty will not, of course, give up its ancestral home in the Taylorian, but we shall be moving other teaching spaces and offices to the Schwarzman Centre when it opens in 2024. Once there, we shall be able to make use of spaces for film projection and theatrical performances, and shall also be better situated to collaborate with colleagues in other faculties.
For now, we offer you a further selection of items reflecting the richness of Modern Languages activity even without a new building. Professor Neil Kenny reflects on the challenges facing language teaching and learning in the UK. The Faculty is committed to increasing its outreach efforts in schools, and Natasha Ryan, our first ever Schools Liaison officer, reports here on one of the many initiatives she has introduced in our work with schools, offering a residential visit to Oxford to year 9 students from Wales. Dr Gemma Tidman describes one of the highlights of our academic programme this year, Professor Catriona Seth’s inaugural lecture, Girls with Books. Reading, Contagion and Acquired Immunity in 18th century fiction, emphasizing that ‘reading can be bad for your ignorance’. Four items arise from students’ experiences, past and present. Catherine Dove reports on an interview, carried out during her year abroad, with Gabriel García Márquez’ sister, while Annie Tuckwell relates the highlights of a year spent as a library assistant in Montpellier, which despite a broken arm persuaded her to return to France straight after graduation. On the occasion of Professor Toby Garfitt’s retirement, alumnus Peter Stevenson reflects on Toby’s commitment to creole and francophone studies and his contribution to the academic and personal development of Peter himself and many other students over the years. Jonathan Paine offers a provocative account of how his return to academia after decades in the banking sector allowed him to develop an original approach to how ‘the business of literature influences its very composition'. Zeena Valenti brings this issue to a close with a description of her work as Assistant Coordinator of the 2019 edition of the annual Night of Ideas at the French Institute, an event which ‘promotes free cross-Channel conversation between members of the public and cultural, political and scientific figures’. We shall sure be needing much more of that.
My time as Chair of the Faculty comes to an end over the summer, and future editions of the Oxford Polyglot will come to you with introductions by my successor, Professor Almut Suerbaum. It has been a great privilege to be involved with the birth of this newsletter. Please do let us know your views of it, and send us suggestions for improvements. Above all, feel free to send us some items to include in it!
Have an excellent summer.
Best wishes,
Professor Ian Watson
Chair of the Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty Board
Professor of French Languages and Literature