Classics and English

Academic Staff

Fellows

Dr Armand D'Angour is the Fellow and Tutor in Classics. He is interested in most areas of Greek and Latin language and literature, and particularly in ancient Greek music, psychology and sociology. He composed the Ode to Athens for the Olympic Games in 2004 and is working on a similar commission for the London Olympics 2012. He has written numerous scholarly articles and verse compositions in Greek and Latin, and is the author of The Greeks and the New: Novelty in ancient Greek imagination and experience (Cambridge University Press, August 2011).

Dr Paulina Kewes, Fellow and Tutor in English, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Associate Member of the Centre for Early Modern British and Irish History at Oxford. Paulina’s research interests are in early modern English literature, especially drama, historiography, and ideas of authorship and plagiarism. Paulina teaches English literature from the Renaissance to the Romantics, including Shakespeare, as well as contributing to interdisciplinary courses for Classics and English and History and English. She has published widely on early modern literature, culture, and history. Her current projects include a monograph on Drama, History, and Politics in Elizabethan England for Oxford University Press, and two co-edited volumes: The Oxford Handbook to Holinshed’s Chronicles and The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (MUP).

Dr Marion Turner, Fellow and Tutor in English, teaches the Old and Middle English papers (roughly the 7th to the 16th centuries), and has particular interests in late-medieval secular literature, especially Chaucer. Her first book - Chaucerian Conflict - was published by Oxford University Press in 2007 and she has also published many articles on Chaucer, Usk, and late-medieval political texts. Marion is currently editing a volume for Blackwell’s on the relationship between theory and Middle English literature, and is also working on literature and medicine, and on place and literary production in the late fourteenth century. For more information click here. Dr Turner will be on leave for the academic year 2011-2012.

Lecturers

Mr Kelsey Jackson Williams, DPhil candidate at Balliol College, is a Lecturer in English at Jesus teaching Early Modern literature from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. His research interests include the history of scholarship (particularly the relationships between antiquarianism, philology, and history), classical reception, British philology (both classical and post-classical), and the Neo-Latin poetic tradition. He is currently preparing studies of a donation of learned Swedish books to the Bodleian in 1683 (with William Poole) and the interpretation of the ruins of the near-Eastern city of Palmyra during the eighteenth century.

Ms Alys Moody is a Career Development Lecturer in English. She has research interests in twentieth-century British, American, European and Anglophone literature, particularly modernism and its aftermaths, and the relationships between literature, philosophy and literary theory. She is writing a DPhil thesis on the aesthetics of starvation in Samuel Beckett, Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee.

Dr Teresa Morgan, Fellow in Ancient History at Oriel College, is a Lecturer at Jesus responsible for arranging teaching and supervision in Ancient History. Her work covers many aspects of literature, culture and society in antiquity. She is the author of Literate education in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds (1998), and Popular Morality in the Early Roman Empire (2007). For academic years 2011-12 and 2012-13 while Dr Morgan is on leave her place will be taken by Dr Lindsay Driediger-Murphy, who specialises in the history of the Roman world.

Dr James Williams is a Career Development Lecturer in English. He teaches in the period 1740 to the present, and has research interests in eighteenth- to twentieth-century poetry, prosody, bibliography, translation, the English Bible, and the works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.

About the Course

Classics and English is a course designed to give students the opportunity to continue their study of both Classics and English, and in particular to investigate and reflect on the literary and linguistic relations between Great Britain and the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. It brings together three of the most important world languages and many of the texts which have exerted the most powerful influence over Western culture.

Teaching takes the form of tutorials and classes, which will usually be organized and taken by the Fellows and Lecturers of the College (although those pursuing some of the more specialized options may receive tutorials from an outside tutor). Attendance at, and production of work for, tutorials and classes is compulsory, and must be given priority over all other activities. The University organizes courses of lectures which cover the syllabus, but which are not compulsory, and which are not designed to prepare candidates for a particular examination paper. Tutors will, however, be happy to advise undergraduates concerning which lectures are likely to prove most beneficial.

The first year examination, Honour Moderations, is taken after three terms. Candidates must offer the following six papers:

English Literature, 1509-1600
EITHER English Literature, 1600-1660 OR Old English Translation and Literature
Critical Commentary [passages for comment from the period 1509-1600]
Unseen Translation [candidates may offer either Latin, or Greek, or both]
Greek and Latin Literature 1 (translation and comment)
Greek and Latin Literature 2 (literary essays)

The Final Examination (FHS), taken at the end of three years, allows great flexibility on both sides of the course, as well as providing extensive opportunity for candidates to explore the relations between the two sides of the course. Candidates take two papers from the parent School of English, chosen from a wide range of periods and options; two similar papers (i.e. topics or periods) drawn from the field of classical studies; and three `link' papers, chosen from the following:

Epic
Tragedy
Comedy
Satire
Pastoral
English Responses to Classical Literature (1832-1900)

Cultural and Intellectual Life

Students at Jesus find themselves welcomed into a serious, lively, and good-humoured academic community with every opportunity to discuss their thoughts in tutorials, seminars, and College events. The Herbert English Society provides a forum for exchange of ideas and discussion of literature, criticism, and the arts. The Society invites poets, playwrights, novelists, academics, journalists, and cultural historians. Recent speakers have included Marina Warner, Philip Pullman, Bernard O’Donoghue, Craig Raine, Hermione Lee, Sally Shuttleworth, William St Clair, Blair Worden, and the acclaimed poet Geoffrey Hill.

Admissions

Candidates are selected on the basis of academic record (e.g. GCSEs) and potential, as shown by their UCAS reference, submitted written work, performance in written tests and in interviews if shortlisted. In a total College entry of about 100 undergraduates, 4 or 5 are offered places in a typical year to read Classics and joint schools. Candidates will be expected to achieve three A grades at A2 level, including grade A in English Literature (or English Language & Literature), and grade A in the classical language, if currently studied. Applications from students taking equivalent examinations such as the International Baccalaureate are welcome. Offers made to post-A Level candidates will usually be unconditional. Applicants studying both classical languages to A2 Level, or only one, are equally welcome, as are those who may have only studied to GCSE level (who follow the Course II option).

Candidates should submit two pieces of written work, one relevant to English, and one relevant to Classics. Those applying for Course II may submit two essays in areas relevant to English or Classics.

Candidates are required to sit the English Literature Admissions Test on Wednesday 2 November 2011 – see the ELAT website for further details. Candidates will also be required to sit one or more tests for Classics on the same date: candidates for Course I will be required to sit an A-level standard test in Latin and/or Greek, and candidates for Course II will be required to sit the Classics Language Aptitude Test. For further details see the Classics subject notes.

Deferred Entry: Applications for deferred entry to Jesus College are welcomed. You must apply for deferred entry at the time of application to Oxford: you cannot change your mind after an offer has been made. Please refer to departmental web sites for subject-specific advice. You should be aware that applicants who are offered places for deferred entry will generally be among the strongest of the cohort for their subject. We would not usually offer more than one or two deferred places per subject in order not to disadvantage the following year's candidates. In some cases, an applicant for deferred entry may be offered a place for non-deferred entry instead. If you require any further advice, please contact the Admissions Officer.

Postgraduate Studies and Careers

In Oxford there is a larger concentration of teachers of classical subjects, and of graduate students, than anywhere else in the world. The following degrees are offered at postgraduate level:

MSt (1 year) or MPhil (2 years) Greek and/or Latin Language and Literature
MSt or MPhil Greek and/or Roman History
DPhil Classics

The Graduate School of the Oxford Faculty of English is large and dynamic. The following degrees are offered at postgraduate level:

MLitt or DPhil English Language and Literature
MSt in English Language and Literature
   650-1550
   1550-1780
   1780-1900
   1900-present day
MPhil in English Literature and Language 650-1550

Graduates in Classics and English go on to a wide variety of careers, including broadcasting, teaching, journalism, acting, management, advertising, librarianship and law.

Preliminary Reading and Further Information

Further information about Classics and English at Oxford can be found on the Faculty of Classics and Faculty of English websites. Information about admissions is available on the University's Undergraduate Courses pages.