British Studies Lecture Series

Paula Marantz Cohen DREXEL UNIVERSITY How can decline in enrollments in the humanities be explained? Nationwide in recent years estimates of the drop in liberal arts majors range from one-fourth to one-third of those in English, history, government, philosophy and other traditional subjects. English departments have been hit especially hard. One study found that faculty members seem to […]

Aaron Pratt HARRY RANSOM CENTER Before the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623 and the efforts of subsequent editors and critics, England’s printed playbooks were considered “riff raff,” connected more with the world of London’s popular theaters than with what we might think of as “capital-L” Literature. Or so we have been told. This […]

Tancred Bradshaw LONDON One of the surprises of Britain’s withdrawal from the Middle East was the successful creation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971. Tancred Bradshaw will discuss the critical role played by Sir William Luce, previously Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Aden Colony, in that transition. Luce was responsible for establishing a viable […]

Philip Goad is the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies (AY2019-20) at Harvard University and Chair of Architecture and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne. He was trained as an architect and gained his PhD in architectural history at the University of Melbourne where he has taught since […]

The London Review of Books was founded in 1979 during a strike at The Times that prevented the publication of the Times Literary Supplement. By the time the dispute at The Times was settled, two issues of the LRB had been published. At the beginning there was only a small circulation. A large proportion of […]

Thomas Ricks NEW YORK TIMES   If the best measure of a general is the ability to grasp the nature of the war he faces, and then to make adjustments, George Washington was one of the greatest the United States ever had. This is not perceived even today because he had few victories during the […]

Speaker – David Leal, Nuffield College, Oxford P.G. Wodehouse was England’s greatest comic writer. His new memorial at Westminster Abbey celebrates his achievements as “Humorist, Novelist, Playwright, Lyricist.” He continues to be widely read and written about. Wodehouse is best known for creating sunny fictional worlds into which we can escape, yet he found himself […]

Speaker – Allen Packwood, Churchill College, Cambridge Allen Packwood will use his knowledge of the Churchill Papers, held at Churchill College, Cambridge, to analyze the contents of Churchill’s despatch boxes. He will go behind the iconic image and the famous oratory to look in detail at Churchill’s leadership and shed light on how the Prime […]

Speaker – Philippa Levine Diverse institutions have attempted to order and to organize, to regulate and to banish, to promote and to sell nakedness. Focusing on religion’s always ambivalent relationship with the human body, this talk explores a cultural history with surprisingly powerful contemporary resonance. Philippa Levine holds the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History […]

Speaker – Janine Barchas In the nineteenth century, inexpensive editions of Jane Austen’s novels were made available to Britain’s working classes. They were sold at railway stations, traded for soap wrappers, and awarded as school prizes. At pennies a copy, these reprints were some of the earliest mass-market paperbacks, with Austen’s stories squeezed into tight […]

Speaker – Michael J. Birkner, Gettysburg College This lecture is about journalists based in Australia practicing their craft in 1942, when the prospect of a Japanese invasion was impending. How did professional standards compare with daily practice? Most information came from official sources, and draft articles had to run the gantlet of military censors. What […]

Speaker – Gwyn Daniel OXFORD In many of his plays, Shakespeare deals with profound political questions that have continuing relevance for the contemporary world. His tragedies often have a family drama at their heart. They include conflicts between personal and family loyalties, on the one hand, and on the other the demands of realpolitik. In […]

Speaker – Sandra Mayer Oscar Wilde once described Benjamin Disraeli’s life as ‘the most brilliant of paradoxes’. It served as a model for someone who, as an Irishman and aspiring literary celebrity, shared Disraeli’s outsider status, his Byronic dandyism, his mastery of the quotable epigram, and his quest for fame in the British establishment. This […]

Speaker – Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa Since 1981, conservators who work in libraries and archives to preserve cultural records have been educated typically in three-to four-year graduate programs. Before 1981 in the U.S., however, no higher education opportunities existed—neither undergraduate nor graduate—targeted to the field of library and archives conservation. Why was this case? Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa locates […]

Speaker – Wayne A. Rebhorn Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night has long been associated with the festive aspects of carnival, especially in its rejection of authority and the exploration of gender confusion in its main, romantic plot. But ‘carnival’ as used by Shakespeare also meant a time of grotesque liberation and indulgence. The carnivalesque can be disturbing as well […]

Speaker – Stephen Sonnenberg While a student at Princeton in the late 1950s and early 1960s Stephen Sonnenberg was influenced by the ideas of the literary critic and poet R. P. Blackmur, and read C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959). He will explain Snow’s influence on his thinking throughout his life, as […]

Speaker – Sam Baker Often described as the inventor of the historical novel, the Scottish author Walter Scott (1771-1832) was also a poet, lawyer, pioneering editor, and popular historian. This talk will explore the theme of stewardship in Scott’s fiction—with particular reference to his best remembered work, Ivanhoe, and one of his least remembered, The […]

Speaker – Dean Robert King This occasion celebrates the end of the five-year process, sponsored by Randy Diehl and the College of Liberal Arts, that resulted in 150 Highly Recommended Books. The other committee members for the project were Robert Abzug (Rapoport Chair of Jewish Studies), Roger Louis (Kerr Professor of English History and Culture), […]

Speaker – David Edwards (GOVERNMENT) David Edwards has been a dedicated reader of American and British newspapers and opinion magazines since the 1950s. In fact, he still subscribes to more than one hundred print editions of newspapers, magazines, and journals. He will talk about how fake news has evolved into the versions of it that […]

Speakers – Bill Brands (HISTORY) Bat Sparrow (GOVERNMENT) Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa (HARRY RANSOM CENTER) Bill Brands and Bat Sparrow will discuss the difference between writing history and biography, and between writing the life of a living person and that of someone dead, perhaps long ago dead, as well as the attitudes of biographers toward their subjects. […]

Speaker – Mark Gasiorowski This lecture will begin with the historic Britain-Iran connection: ‘If you lift up Khomeini’s beard, you will find “MADE IN BRITAIN” stamped on his chin.’ After Iran’s 1978-1979 revolution, US and British officials sought a cooperative, mutually-beneficial relationship with the country’s new leaders. Contrary to what many believed, the CIA did […]

Speaker – Joanna Hitchcock Among the 1,300 passengers aboard the Titanic when she steamed out of Southampton Harbor in April 1912 was Noël, Countess of Rothes. She was traveling to the States to join her husband. This account of Noël’s experiences on the ship, in the lifeboat, and aboard the rescue ship is told through […]

Speakers – Virginia Brown (Dell Medical School), Robert Prentice (McCombs Business School) Stephen Sonnenberg, M.D. (Plan II), Paul Woodruff (Philosophy) The Oxford Ethics Centre was established in 2003 with the aim of rational reflection on personal and professional ethics: ‘The vision is Socratic, not missionary’. The Oxford Centre promotes discussion on ‘climate change, terrorism, global […]

Speaker – Bernard Wasserstein At the end of its three-decades-long mandate in 1948, Britain withdrew its administration and 100,000-strong armed forces from Palestine. But unlike its departure from any other dependent territory, it did not hand over to any successor government. Instead it left Arabs and Jews to fight for possession of the Holy Land. […]

Speaker – Karl Rove Karl Rove’s recent book, The Triumph of William McKinley, deals with the election of 1896 and its consequences. His lecture will expand on the results of the 1898 war with Spain: the annexation of the Philippines and Hawaii in the Pacific and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean as well as Cuba […]

Speaker – Geoffrey Wheatcroft The debate on Britain’s departure from the European Union, before the referendum and ever since, has invoked the past: ‘Our Island Story’ and a thousand years of history. The Leavers, or Brexiteers, are especially prone to talking of ‘vassalage’ and medieval history, of the 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals, of the […]

Speaker – Alan Friedman Scholars tend to label Samuel Beckett’s early career negatively as either his “Joyce years” or his “Surrealist period,” maintaining that Joyce’s writings had a detrimental effect on Beckett’s initial works and that Surrealism was only a minor influence. But both were critical models for Beckett. He mined his powerful predecessors for […]

Speaker – James Dee  Religious beliefs have been questioned and opposed for centuries, from the pre-Socratics of ancient Hellas to the rise of science and the humanistic values of the Enlightenment—often said to be in decline today. This talk will summarize the ideas of a surprisingly large group of Hellenic skeptics and atheists, briefly survey […]

Speaker – Tony Hopkins Challenging conventional accounts of the place of the United States in the international order during the last three centuries, Tony Hopkins will argue that the United States was part of a British imperial order throughout this period. After 1898, it ruled a now forgotten empire in the Pacific and Caribbean. It […]

Speaker – Harshan Kumarasingham  As the world watches Britain’s slow departure from the European Union, it can be constructive to remember the multiple occasions, especially since 1947, when Britain pulled out of its imperial possessions, often in haste and turmoil. Decolonization changed the nature of the Commonwealth, the seventy-year-old organization that replaced the empire as […]

Speaker – Peter Stansky William Morris was a poet and artist as well as the foremost figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. He succeeded in reviving some of the techniques of handmade production that machines were replacing. His iconic patterns for fabrics and wallpaper are instantly recognizable, and the baroquely beautiful productions of his […]

Speaker – John Farrell It is sometimes overlooked that Jane Eyre is a classic Bildungsroman that narrates Jane’s formative years and spiritual education. Even more deliberately, it is a journey narrative. But Jane’s travels follow two incompatible paths. Both paths are narratively constructed as pilgrimages. Charlotte Brontë’s task in the novel—and Jane’s as well—is to make these pilgrimages converge. Their convergence […]

Speaker – Derek Leebaert The British Empire remained a superpower at least until 1957. But the re-elected Eisenhower administration then proclaimed ‘a declaration ofindependence’ from British authority. The years in between are freighted withmyths: Britain’s ‘withdrawal from the Mediterranean’; the influence of GeorgeKennan’s view of Britain within the U.S. government; and Britain and thebeginning of […]

Speaker – Paul Woodruff The Irish poet E. R. Dodds (1893–1979) was expelled as a student from Oxford in 1916 for protesting the English reaction to the Easter Rising. As a mature scholar, he transformed classical scholarship with his brilliant book The Greeks and the Irrational. The young poets W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice flourished […]

Speaker – George Kelling The British acquired Cyprus for strategic reasons in 1888, and the island has provided a valuable strategic base up to this day. During World War II, Cyprus faced the danger of a German invasion. The loyalty of the Greek population on the island could not be taken for granted. According to […]

Speaker – Robert D. King Founding Dean, College of Liberal Arts Alan Turing was the greatest mathematician Britain produced in the twentieth century. After a brilliant start at Cambridge he became the leading light in the British code-breaking center at Bletchley Park, and he was instrumental in breaking the German ENIGMA cipher by inventing and […]

Speaker – Rodolfo John Alaniz HISTORY Charles Darwin’s voyage aboard HMS Beagle inaugurated a new era in the history of biology. However, Darwin was one of many naturalists who gathered specimens and gained prestige on nineteenth-century British expeditions. This talk will explore the role that the British Empire played in the establishment of Darwin’s theory, […]

Speaker – Nigel Newton CHIEF EXECUTIVE, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING, LONDON The Harry Potter books have been translated into some 75 languages and have sold more than 450 million copies. Nigel Newton owes the inspiration to publish the first in the series to his young daughter, who read the manuscript and insisted that it was ‘much better […]

Speaker – Stephen Enniss, HARRY RANSOM CENTER In the early 1960s a talented group of Northern Irish poets emerged in Belfast, including the future Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. In the decades since, a popular myth has taken root about the Northern Irish Renaissance with some commentators linking the emergence of a new generation of poets […]

Speaker – Kevin Kenny, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Éamon de Valera (1882-1975) is the most important and divisive figure in modern Irish history. After rising to prominence in the Easter 1916 rebellion, he rejected the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, provoking civil war in Ireland, but he returned to power in the 1930s and became the architect […]

Speaker: Paul Sullivan – ENGLISH Edward Coleman was drawn, hanged, and quartered for treason in December 1678, a victim of the public frenzy around the ‘Popish Plot’. The Ransom Center’s Pforzheimer Collection includes hundreds of manuscripts from Coleman and his newsletter office, reporting information and court gossip to Richard Bulstrode, a British diplomat in Brussels. […]

Speaker – Jonathan Brown When Fidel Castro formed an alliance with the Soviet Union in 1962, it sparked the Cuban missile crisis and became a defining incident of the Cold War. Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana predates the Cuban missile crisis, but the plot involves missile installations and seems to anticipate the events of […]

Speaker – George Scott Christian In the last four years, fundamental questions have arisen about the future of the composite state created by the 1707 Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. In 2014 a majority of Scots voted to ‘remain’ in the Union. Yet in 2016 a large majority (68%) voted to ‘remain’ in […]

Although better known as a nurse, Florence Nightingale was also a skilled data scientist who successfully convinced hospitals that they could improve health care by using statistics. In 1859, in honor of these achievements, she became the first woman ever elected to the Royal Statistical Society. This talk will consider the question of what Nightingale’s […]

Adam Howard U. S. Department of State From the Balfour Declaration’s publication in November 1917 to Israel’s creation in 1948, the American labor movement worked for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.  Successive British governments struggled to reconcile the contradictions of the Balfour Declaration, but American labor’s hopes rose in 1945 with the British Labour Party’s historic […]

All Imaginable Excuses: Australian Deserters and the Fall of Singapore. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 is a defining moment in both British and Australian history. Popular nationalist accounts in Australia emphasize Churchill’s ‘betrayal’. Australians increasingly see Singapore’s surrender as marking-in the words of Prime Minister John Curtin at the time-as the start of […]

In 1984-85, during the protracted coalminer’s strike in Great Britain, Tony Harrison, the well-known poet, dramatist, translator, and screenwriter, wrote the poem ‘v.’, modeled to an extent on Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’. In 1987, after Channel 4 made a film version of the poem, ‘v.’ acquired a certain notoriety, less for […]