LFU:online

Students will enhance their cultural awareness and develop their academic research skills by looking at some of the distinguishing characteristics of British culture and society through one particular thematic lens. They will analyse specific texts, films and other cultural documents with regard to their wider sociocultural context.

Oxford and Cambridge have not only produced many of the country’s leading politicians and intellectuals but have also inspired literary classics such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. They have been a scene of women’s battle for equal access to education just as much as they have been a popular setting for crime fiction and TV detective series (ranging from Gaudy Night and The Movable Toyshop to Inspector Morse and its recent prequel Endeavour). Writers as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Vera Brittain, Evelyn Waugh and Philip Larkin all created their own portrayals of college life in one of the two cities of Dreaming Spires / Perspiring Dreams.

These mazes of abundant college gardens, lawned quads, candle-lit dining halls, wood-panelled libraries, and mysterious staircases will be used as a jumping-off point to explore aspects of the British educational system, social structure and class consciousness, political and intellectual history, literature, film and cultural production.

Reading and viewing assignments, group work, class discussion.

Regular preparatory assignments and contributions in class; two short tests; written proseminar paper.

All course literature will be provided. Detailed bibliographical guidance for proseminar papers will be given at the beginning of term.

Participants must have successfully completed all three parts of the module English I.

Please bring a copy of your transcript of records with you to the first session.

The proseminar paper written on this course can be used as a basis for your bachelor’s thesis.