The Structure of the Program
Structure of Summer Sessions
British Studies At Oxford is an interdisciplinary summer program, offering each year a range of seminars in the humanities and social sciences. The seminars – all students take two and some apply to enter a third – are matched with a series of activities and events for all students, regardless of the specific classes they taking. These include plenary lectures, study excursions, workshops, and recitals. For the typical structure of a session, follow this link.
Each session of BSAO concentrates on a chosen historical period, and all the seminars focus on aspects of that period. This enables BSAO to offer a wide variety of options but also to ensure that these options contribute to each other and to forming in the mind and experience of the participant an overall understanding.
The 4 Period Rotation
Britain – one way or another, with various names and descriptions – has been around for a long time. Somewhat bizarrely for a little archipelago off the northwest of Europe, itself only a western peninsula of the Eurasian landmass, Britain has found itself at the center of events: political, economic, cultural, social, industrial. And much in this history has been contested (even the name), the issues continuing to resonate and dominate in our modern world.
British Studies At Oxford seeks to make the archipelago’s history more comprehensible by dividing it into four sections, which follow each other in a year-by-year sequence:
Session 1: Early and Medieval Britain: From Roman Britain to the Coming of the Tudors
Session 2: Britain in the Renaissance
Session 3: Britain in the Ages of the Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism
Session 4: Empire and After: Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
No-one pretends that these divisions make absolute sense or claims that this structure enables us to include everything that is valuable. In fact, if you examine the courses of study in, say, different versions of our Britain in the Renaissance sessions, you’ll see that the focus has shifted, often reflecting changes in emphasis in the wider academic understanding of what’s central to the period.
Unlike many programs, BSAO seeks to create and intensify connections between different courses of study, always trying to develop links between diverse subjects. We also put a premium of creating courses that maximize our engagement with Britain as the physical location in which we are studying. The places we’re visiting are built into our syllabi; the differences between “reading about” and experiencing are at the heart of our methods of study. We also encourage participants to engage independently with local culture and this is valuable not only when dealing with the contemporary – you’d be surprised how much the issues dealt with in relation to the medieval world continue to shape modern society.