Professor Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French in the Faculty of Mediæval and Modern Languages at Oxford and Emeritus Research Fellow of St John’s, is to be congratulated on being appointed CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to Literary Scholarship. Author of major works of criticism, including The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (1979), Recognitions: a Study in Poetics (1988), Pré-Histoires (1999, 2001) and, most recently, Mignon’s Afterlives: Crossing Cultures from Goethe to the Twenty-First Century (2011), Professor Cave was recognised by the award of the International Balzan Prize (2009) “for his outstanding contributions to a new understanding of Renaissance literature and of the influence of Aristotelian poetics in modern European literature”. He used the prize to set up a research project, the Balzan Interdisciplinary Seminar, based at the St John’s College Research Centre, to address the question “What are the nature and value of literature as an object of knowledge in the interdisciplinary spectrum?” The Modern Languages Faculty is delighted at...
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The impact of the introduction of the EBacc performance measure can be felt in this year's GCSE numbers, with modern foreign languages up by 15.8%.
French numbers are up from 153,436 to 177,288 (up 15.5%). German up from 57,547 to 62,932 (up 9.4%). Spanish up from 72,606 to 91,315 (up 25.8%). Other languages up from 29,843 to 31,368 (up 5.1%).
The figures show a change in market share: Spanish now represents over a quarter of GCSE entries (25.2%), taking one percentage point each from German (17.3%) and other languages (8.6%), while French retains just under half of total entries (48.9%).
Modern Languages at University
A letter to the TImes Higher Education by Jim Coleman, Chair of the University Council of Modern Languages, on degree-level language uptake.
The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities – Taylor Institution
November 1-2, 2013Conveners: Martin McLaughlin and Javier Muñoz-Basols
The first of three annual EHRC workshops on translation will be held on 1-2 November 2013 in TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities), Woodstock Rd, and in the Taylor Institution, St Giles.
Conveners: Martin McLaughlin and Javier Muñoz-Basols, with the assistance of Dr Elisabetta Tarantino
writing brecht is an international research and translation project devoted to extending and developing the corpus of Brecht’s works in English, led by Tom Kuhn. It incorporates a major AHRC-funded project, ‘Brecht into English’, which proposes a parallel critical appraisal of the transmission of Brecht’s writings and ideas and a historical assessment of the reception of Brecht in the English-speaking world. ... more information
There will also be a cultural programme of workshops, performances and recitals starting with:
Inaugural Symposium
Friday 15 November 2013
2pm-6pm
Maplethorpe Seminar Room, St Hugh's College, Oxford.... more information
Bertolt Brecht - Songs of Exile and War
Friday 15 November 2013
7pm-8.15pm (bar from 6.15pm)
Dr Neil Kenny's workshop 'Researching and Writing a Thesis: Problems, Method' is designed for the Faculty's DPhil students. All are welcome to attend, at any stage of the year, whatever year they are in, and whether or not they attended in previous years. Over the year we discuss a wide range of problems, techniques, and methods that tend to arise in both the researching and the writing of the kinds of doctorates that are done within the Faculty (with the exception of linguistics, to which the workshop is less well geared).
Each week includes a short presentation (maximum 15 minutes) by a student, that describes how their project came about, its current state, and some of the problems and challenges arising. Presentations do not go into specialist detail; they are not like ones given at a research seminar. Dr Kenny does not give feedback of a specialist nature; he makes clear to students that, in the unlikely event that he inadvertently contradicts a supervisor's advice, they should follow the latter. Apart from perhaps giving one presentation during the year, students do no other preparation: they just turn up.
An Oxford undergraduate, Dulcie fforde (SEH), has won the prize in the 2013 R.H.Gapper Undergradute Essay Competition for the Society of French Studies. The subject of her essay was ‘“L’image n’a pas de sens propre” (Compagnon). Discuss the pertinence of this claim in relation to Renaissance poetic practice.’ This is the second year in a row that an Oxford undergraduate has won this prize, for which essays are judged anonymously.
The schools liaison office in the Oxford French sub-faculty is proud to announce the launch of Adventures on the Bookshelf. A collaborative project run by the staff and students in French at the university, the blog is aimed at pupils and teachers of French in Years 11 to 13, and anyone with an interest in French language and culture who may be considering applying to study them at Oxford. It combines lively posts about French language, literature and culture, insights into student life, and reviews and recommendations for French books, films, apps and websites, along with information for prospective applicants about how the Oxford admissions process works from UCAS form to interview, and what you can do to prepare for it. Please do check it out, and let us know what you think.
Work will be commencing in the Taylor Institution on Monday (22 August 2011) to begin the process of improving accessibility in this building. The work will be carried out in several stages in order to avoid disruption during term-time. A brief outline of the main stages is given below, and further detailed information together with design and floor plans will be available online shortly.
Detailed information about the written work that candidates are required to submit as part of their application for Modern Languages (and Joint Schools with Modern Languages) may be found here.
If you have questions about what pieces of work to submit, please contact the Tutor for admissions at the college considering your application.
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.
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.