London

Sunny, 75 degrees F

8:00am - Met WISC group in front of Ashmolean Museum to catch motor-coach for London. Heavy traffic.

10:30am - Finally arrived in London. Began driving tour.

11:30am - We disembarked the coach and took a walking tour of the Westminster Abbey grounds. However, we did not go inside.  Admission is around £15, so we were rather glad of that fact.  We'll need to make the visit at some point though. Next we wandered past the WWII-era Cabinet War Rooms, where some of the ground would be returning to in the afternoon for a tour, and made our way over to Kensington Park. Lots of families and young couples out for a stroll on a warm summer day.  From there we proceeded to Buckingham Palace where we caught the tail end of the Changing of the Guards ceremony. Many decorations were being set up for Queen's Diamond Jubilee next weekend which will mark her 60th year on the throne.

Bailey calls the Queen collect.

Maroon Friday at Westminster Abbey, London

Member of the Foot Guards outside St. James Palace

Changing of the Guard, Buckingham Palace

 
12:00pm -  Walked to Trafalgar Square where we were dismissed for afternoon activities. Bailey, Hannah, Spencer, and I ate lunch at the Sherlock Holmes pub, a decent London establishment with a rather kitschy upstairs mock-up of the fictional detective's study. I had a beef and onion chutney sandwich with a side of Yorkshire pudding. Also, a decent but pricy ale.  The meal was quite good, but prices in the City take some getting used to.

Sherlock Holmes pub, London

Crossing the River Thames

River traffic on the Thames, London

2:30pm - After strolling over the River Thames and down the south bank, we arrived at Shakespeare's Globe, the modern reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, to attend a performance of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew." However, we had been forewarned to expect a surprise. As part of the theater's World Culture Festival featuring 37 plays in 37 languages, this performance was to be in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. The acting troupe made minor changes to the decorations and character names to reflect the cultural differences. Also, the company added Bollywood flourishes including an onstage house band with traditional Pakistani instrumentation and several choreographed dance numbers. Quite an experience!

Hannah nerds out at the Globe!

(l to r): Spencer Hall, Hannah Rogers, Bailey Hansen, and me at the Globe

And the band played on... Shakespeare's Globe, London

The "Taming of the Shrew" is about a strong-willed elder daughter and her family's plot to teach her her place and marry her off. Americans may be familiar with the 1999 film adaptation "10 Things I Hate About You" starring Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles.  The play's ending is funny but rather misogynistic. Some critics view the play as satirical, but we couldn't help but note that the mostly-Pakistani crowd seemed to respond well "whenever a woman was put in her place."  I certainly don't want to make generalizations about an entire culture, and I must emphasis that none of my friends nor I understood the Urdu version of the script. (At the time I may have claimed total fluency in Urdu to my friends as a joke, so don't tell anyone. Our secret.) I imagine a typical theater crowd would skew more liberal and/or more cultured than others, but the fact remains that this audience did go cheer wildly during several tense scenes.  I suppose all I can do is chalk it up to cultural differences.

"Taming of the Shrew" at Shakespeare's Globe

Even though we could not understand a word, the performance was incredibly engrossing. I suppose it's cliché, but in this case Shakespeare definitely transcends linguistic boundaries.

Moving Up in the World

 Sunny, 72 degrees F

10:30 - Toured Christ Church with Junior Commons Room (JCR) President Tosin Oyetunji.  Four MSU students have been assigned to Christ Church and will be joining fellow MSU student Ben Bailey who has been studying in Oxford since January.

 Christ Church encompasses both the college of that name and the Anglican cathedral contained within the college grounds.  This is a fairly unique arrangement and grants Christ Church several distinguishing characteristics. For example, Christ Church has both a Cathedral Choir and a College Choir, both quite famous.

Tom Tower and Mercury Fountain at Christ Church

View of Dining Hall from Tom Quad

Interior of Dining Hall

Christ Church occupies the site of the former St. Frideswide's Monastery which was suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey when he established his Cardinal's College in 1524.  Henry VIII acquired the college after Wosley's downfall and reestablished it as Christ Church in 1546.  Since then, the college has grown to its present size of approximately 700 students (including graduate students). The college has one of the highest reputations within the University with numerous former students going on to achieve great fame and success.  Some of these include the philosopher John Locke, religious leaders such as John Wesley and William Penn, and the writers W.H. Auden and Lewis Carroll. 

(For an official History of Christ Church, click here.)

Our tour included the famous Tom Quad (named for Tom Tower, the famous bell tower which dominates the college's main entrance), Peckwater Quad, the college library, the Masters' Garden, and the Christ Church Meadow (a large area of pasture land leading down to the River Thames and the various college boathouses).  We also visited the dining hall (the famous Hogwarts Great Hall from Harry Potter) and stopped by Tosin's room to have a look at some actual student lodgings.  (High ceilings, wood paneling, and internet access. What more do you need?)

(l to r): Khanh and Ben with JCR President Tosin Oyetunji in front of his residence hall.

We concluded the tour with a stop by the college Treasurer's office in order to register a credit card for dining privileges.  We must access our online student accounts to add money to our student ID cards for breakfast and lunch, but dinners are charged to a credit card with the bill (referred to as paying battels), payable at the end of term.

Interior 1 of the Christ Church JCR

Interior 2 of the Christ Church JCR

12:00 - Ate a quick lunch at G&D's, a local sandwich and ice cream chain with a location across the street from Christ Church.  Ordered a turkey and Swiss bagel, water (which was somehow misheard as "large latte"), and Bailey's ice cream for "afters" (see notes on lecture below).

G&D's near Christ Church

12:45 - Returned to WISC office for another lecture by Professor Schüttinger, this time on the subject of Anti-Americanism. The U.K. has been a source of anti-Americanism since British colonists landed at Jamestown in 1607, but nowadays, anti-Americanism is not something commonly encountered in Oxford, not seriously anyway.  However, given the course of U.S.-U.K. relations over the past decade and the strain placed on the "special relationship" by two wars, it is a topic worth discussing.

The majority of the speech focused on the peculiarities of British culture.  Brits are generally more reserved, something Prof. Schüttinger attributes to the smallness of the British isles and the subsequent lack of space and privacy.  There is a noticeable absence of front porches, something common in the American South but altogether foreign here.  A Brit may have a rear garden but almost never a porch.  The neighbors won't know you're home. Also, due to the tumultuous history of the continent, Prof. Schüttinger believes that Europeans in general possess a "tragic sense of life" compared to the American sense of life's "unlimited possibility."  Europeans tend to be more dependent on one another while Americans are stereotypically independent.  Finally and perhaps most importantly, the British class system deserves mention.  Class in Britain is loosely associated with birth and education whereas in the U.S. it is based more on money.  As a result, one's class-status in the U.K. is more difficult to change in one's lifetime.  One can earn money, but that won't raise one's class.  In Prof. Schüttinger's opinion, the system is typified by the British use of four different words for "desert" depending on one's class:  "pudding" for the upper class, "sweet" for the upper-middle class, "dessert" for the lower-middle class, and "afters" for the working class.  One can judge a restaurant by its word choice, though some cheat and upgrade their status by using a classier-sounding term. "That's a Killer Fact, you see."

Norrington Room at Blackwell's.

After the lecture we wandered back over to Broad Street to pay a visit to Blackwell´s Bookshop, the flagship store of the famous British bookseller. This Blackwell´s location boasts four floors of books as well as a massive basement.  The basement, called the Norrington Room, contains over three miles of shelving! If that´s not enough, the Blackwell´s music and art/poster shops are located across the street. Needless to say, we were occupied for the next several hours!!

How To Earn a "Gentlemanly C"

Weather: sunny, mid-70s

We began our orientation with an "Introduction to the Oxford Academic System." Fairly dry material one would imagine.  Using the library, college overviews, and the like.  However, we at OSAP/WISC have the good fortune to receive our introduction to Oxford from the uproariously funny Professor Robert Schüttinger, the Director or OSAP as well as a former Visiting Fellow in International Relations, MC, Oxford University and an Associate Fellow at Davenport College, Yale.  He also has spent time at the U.S. Department of State.

Professor Robert Schüttinger

As we soon learned, Prof. Schüttinger is quite a character. Though American, he talks like Churchhill and dresses like a naval man with double-breasted suits and a stripped tie reminiscent of a pea-coat or sailor´s suit (he did, in fact, serve in the U.S. Navy).  His catchphrases include "that´s a killer fact" (fact or statistic that changes the world) and "...as you say" (this after every second or third sentence).  We thoroughly enjoyed his introduction and will be very fortunate to hear several more lectures from him over the next few days.

He began by showing off the WISC office's prized collection of 19th century Vanity Fair covers (an entirely different magazine from the one we know today), most depicting caricatures of leading statesmen of the day.  Prof. Schüttinger spouted off remarks about nearly every one. (e.g. "You can tell he´s the [Ottoman] sultan from all his 'marijuana tubes' (hookas).") 

He then attempted to briefly explain the University of Oxford system.  The university is comprised of about 44 self-administrating colleges (some departments are technically colleges). There are also about 100 university-affiliated libraries in town: including individual college libraries, the Bodleian library, and several specialized collections.  Most academic life takes place within the colleges.  Students live, dine, and study within their college campuses. Professors belong to independent faculties of their subjects (e.g. Faculty of English, History, etc.) and typically tutor or hold fellowships within a particular college.   One could say that the university is therefore a loose federation of colleges and faculties more than a single, unified body.  The university does have an overall governing body, but in practice the individual colleges are very powerful.

The primary method of education is the tutorial.  Students meet with their tutors (professors, though often called 'dons') approximately once a week, spend the next week reading reference material at the various libraries, write a 2,000-2,500 word essay on a given theme, and meet with the tutor the following week to review the essay.  Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Students take about two tutorials per eight-week term.  There are three terms: Michaelmas (fall), Hillary (spring), and Trinity (spring-summer).  This seems rather simple at first glance, but students supplement their tutorials with optional public lectures provided by the various colleges.  The idea is to learn to learn to educate oneself, to craft a convincing argument based on one's knowledge, and to defend it well. Students sit for cumulative examinations during their first or second year and in their final year, earning first-, upper or lower second-, or third-class honours based on the results. First-class honours in both sets of exams is a Double-First, etc.  First-class honours is the typical requirement for post-graduate work.  Post-graduate work is not as common in the UK, and many famous academics including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis never held anything higher than a B.A. After seven years an Oxford graduate can actually write in to receive his or her M.A. for a small fee (I've heard £5).  "You're an Oxford grad. You're probably doing pretty well for yourself anyway."

The University does have something of an unwanted reputation as a playground for the British upper classes. There was a time when "Gentlemanly Cs" (third-class honors??) were fashionable in some circles.  Prof. Schüttinger told the story in which, several years ago, Christ Church came in fourth among colleges for academic achievement and several C.C. graduates in the audience booed the announcement. Not because of a poor showing, but rather from the perception that the college was "trying too hard".  There is something to be said for balancing work with play.  Oxford has numerous clubs and teams and an education doesn't come strictly from books.

Lest I give the impression that Oxford is a elitist upper-class institution,well... It is, but it is also international.  1/3 of the university is foreign: students and faculty.  The world's best and brightest come here to learn and for a few weeks, and we have the extraordinary opportunity to mix with them and become a little richer for the experience.  To find ourselves. (Prof. Schüttinger's Killer Fact:  "Personally, I've never lost myself, so there has been no need in looking.)

Later in the day we met the Head of the New College Library who explained the rather complex and confusing Bodleian library system.  "The Bod" is predominately a reading library; materials are not allowed out of the building.  However, several of the colleges are lending libraries and certain materials can be shipped to your college library for easier access. As the library system currently contains about 11 million volumes, many obscure and less-used materials are housed in a storage facility 20 miles away.  Students must plan their research schedules carefully as books may take a day or two to reach their destination.  New College has a great German collection, but as a member of Christ Church, I have no access to the New College collection.  I must ask a New College member to collect materials for me, or else make friends with, say, the Head Librarian.  I 've already made some headway on the latter track.

In the afternoon, another professor discussed tutorial essays in greater detail before the WISC students made our way over to the Bodleian library to take our library oaths.  After the loss of a large portion of the collection during the religious turmoil of the Reformation in the 1500s, the library was reconstituted with strict laws including an article requiring all members to swear an oath to abstain from defacing materials or bringing "open flames" into the library, a necessary precaution before the invention of electric lighting. And still a good idea today. We took our oaths in the chapel of the old Divinity School and received library cards which will also act as our primary student cards during our time at Oxford.

The Divinity School, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Taking the Bodleian oath in the chapel of the Divinity School, Oxford

During all  of this, I was supposed to meet my German Film tutor in her rooms at New College, but due to the fact that the group was literally locked inside the chapel until we had sworn our oaths, I missed my appointment.  Terribly disappointed , but I rescheduled my tutorial for next week. Since I was there, I did manage to explore New College a bit, particularly the college chapel with its exquisite altar.

New College chapel, Oxford

 Afterwards, dinner, a walk, and preparations for another round of orientation lectures, "as you say."

The Road to Oxford, Pt. II

 Weather: Clear, 52˚F/76˚F

Arrived at Heathrow Airport with my friend Khanh Nguyen and cleared Customs and Border Control in only 45 minutes.  We gathered our luggage and rode a train over to Terminal 5 to await the arrival of our other classmates.

Waiting for the Man:

Khanh and I settled into a booth at Costa Coffee where i made my first use of British Pounds in about ten years.  I had forgotten all the funny shapes and sizes of the small denomination coins. I couldn't understand a word the barrista said, but the coffee was strong and kept me going until our friends began to trickle through Customs.  We entertained ourselves for the next four hours by engaging in a lively debate about our surroundings and the program itinerary:

Q: Why is the British Pound so expensive?
A: Because if you fold a £10 note correctly, you can give the queen a beard.

Q: What language were the Costa barristas speaking?
A: Czech or something vaguely Eastern European.

Cameron and Khanh explore Heathrow's Terminal 5

 Our program leader and Shackouls Honors College dean Dr. Chris Snyder cleared customs around noon and herded us onto an Oxford-bound motorcoach with instructions to meet up with our Washington International Studies Council (WISC) liason(s): a person (or persons) named Tim-Bob-Rupert.  The ride was to last 75 minutes, so after vowing to one another to remain awake, most students took much-needed naps.


Down, Down to Oxford Town:


Outside the coach England passed by in browns and greens.  The lush, rolling countryside beyond the motorway dominated the view for the first 45 minutes before yielding to the stone row-houses and concrete car parks of suburban Oxford.  The coach meandered through the lanes and streets of the medieval inner city, the sidewalks crowded by smartly-dressed students as well as more-casually dressed locals and hundreds of tourists lured by the beginning of the summer season.    It is one thing to talk of traveling to Oxford and quite another to actually experience it.  We took in all the sights and sounds of this bustling modern city punctuated by the imposing, solemn buildings of the university's various colleges and their offices and libraries. (Pictures coming tomorrow.)

Also, everyone is on the wrong side of the road...

We disembarked at Gloucester Green, a bricked-over square and regional bus hub without a blade of anything green in sight.  We were quite unsure of how to proceed from there, but fortunately  Tim-Bob-Rupert (actually three persons) wandered over from the nearby WISC office and assisted us in hailing cabs to deliver us in groups through the alleyways and high streets of the old city to our various apartments scattered around its edges.

Concerning Dwellings...

My particular residence turned out to be a neat, late-19th century row house situated on the corner of a T-intersection halfway along quiet Juxton Street.  This three-story stone house lies on the farthest edges of our WISC city maps, but in actuality lies only a brisk 15 minute walk from the city center.  Still, a faster means of transport will likely need to be acquired before long.  Fortunately, the neighboring building is a small cycling shop and a quick visit assured us that a bike or two could be rented to us quite cheaply during our stay.  Also, we are close to a small canal which feeds into the Thames and rowboats are easily rented there.  Rowing to classes every morning?  One can dream...

 

The house itself has five bedrooms: four for MSU students and another for a longer-term student we have yet to meet.  Four of the bedrooms are located in the three-story section of the house facing Juxton Street; however, a fifth bedroom is located over the kitchen at the rear of the house. BTW, the kitchen has one of those mysterious European washer/dryer combos that always leaves clothes soaking wet.  We first mistook the fifth room for an attic, but upon exploring it, we discovered it had a large closet and a private washroom and shower.  I claimed super-senior privilege (actually now graduate privilege) and took it.  Unfortunately, the steep, curving staircase up to it may be my undoing. Within the first hour there I managed to slip on a very narrow step and slide halfway down to the kitchen.

"Don't be so hasty, Master Stroud."

Business Before Pleasure

At 5:00pm we walked back downtown to the WISC offices on George Street for a meet-and-greet.  Dr. Snyder introduced us to some visiting students from his previous university Merrymount University in Arlington, Virginia.  We also met students from Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The WISC staff were very hospitable and will assist us however they can for the duration of our stay.

After introductions we all walked down the street to the nearby pub called The Red Lion for dinner.  Most pubs operate in the following fashion:  1. find table and remember table number. 2. order food and drinks at the bar using number.  3.  await food at table.  For anyone familiar with Starkville, MS locales, we decided The Red Lion was an equivalent of The Veranda in terms of price and offerings. We certainly can't afford to eat there everyday, buy we ought to celebrate our first night in Oxford, right?

Around 8:00pm some of the MSU students wandered over to another pub named The Four Candles for some cheaper fare before heading back to our residences for a well-earned night's sleep. Cheers!

The Road to Oxford, Pt. I

Flew with United Airlines from New Orleans to Heathrow Airport, London via Houston, TX. According to the pre-flight videos, United recent spent half a billion dollars upgrading its air fleet, and the results show. The Boeing 777 for the transatlantic flight had a vast entertainment library which I explored quite thoroughly over the nine hour flight.  After completing my rereading of Tolkien's The Hobbit, I watched the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. For purely scholastic reasons, of course.

Also, in the name of scholarship, I forced myself to listen to the 2011 Lou Reed and Metallica collaborative album Lulu, based on a series of 19th century plays by German dramatist Frank Wedekind.  Infamously, Metallica singer James Hetfield repeated states that "[he] is the table" and I could not find any reason to doubt him.  On the whole I'd say the album is a noble failure, but it definitely had some interesting moments.

Heathrow Airport has been in the news this year because of the horrendously long queues at Customs and Border Control.  U.K. Border Agency regulations and the upcoming 2012 London Olympic Games are expected to severely test the system.  Wait times are estimated at upwards of two hours at peak times. I'm not looking forward to the experience.  Fortunately the flight will arrive at 7:15, so I may avoid the worst of it.

Reading List for Oxford

Trying to fill the down time between finals week and graduation, I've begun to read my way through the required texts list for our J.R.R. Tolkien tutorial.  In the last week, I've managed the following:

1.) Children of Húrin (posthumous)by J.R.R. Tolkien - a Lord of the Rings prequel

2.) Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C.S. Lewis - the first book of Lewis' science fiction trilogy

3.) J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977) by H. Carpenter 

Children of Húrin was entertaining, if a bit depressing.  Doomed hero blames boorish behavior on his family's curse and causes the deaths of almost everyone he knows. Not spoiling anything as it's all foreshadowed from the beginning.  Out of the Silent Planet was a passable early sci-fi book.  A university linguistics professor (of course, he would be) takes a trip to Mars and has his "Avatar" moment. As expected, Lewis even manages to work in some Christian allegory.  Carpenter's biography is a very moving account of Tolkien's remarkable life and career.  His linguistics work, often overshadowed by his literary fame, is quite interesting.

The rest of the list includes Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937) as well as Lord of the Rings (1954-55), all of which I read in middle school (like most of my fellow classmates, I suspect. Except for Khanh). 

I am planning to reread my old copy of The Hobbit after graduation. Following the later publication of the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien made substantial revisions to The Hobbit  to consolidate his developing ideas about his fantasy world in later editions, particularly his depiction of Sméagol/Gollum and the account of his riddle game with Bilbo Baggins.  I'm now anxious to locate an early edition of The Hobbit and compare it to the revised text.  Surely the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford will have a copy.

Announcing my German Tutorial Topic!

 I've been in contact with my Oxford German tutor and we've agreed on a tutorial which will cover German films from the Weimar Republic era (1919-1933).  A bit of an esoteric topic, I know, but it will tie in nicely with the two German courses I took this semester: 20th Century German Drama (SPOILER: most everyone dies) and German Art, Politics, and Propaganda.  The second class focused on the development of German aesthetics, the study of beauty and taste, from its roots in Greek philosophy through the 18th-20th centuries in Germany and how the Nazi party used art and film in the development of a fascist aesthetic. The early 20th century saw the development of film as a bold, new artistic medium and the Weimar Republic in its heyday was a laboratory for Expressionist film.  Think Metropolis (1927) [or here for IMDB page].  Mountain films (Bergfilm) were very popular too.  Leni Riefenstahl, famous as a director for her propaganda films such as Triumph of the Will (1934)[or here for IMDB page], made her name as an actress in several early mountain films.

Submitted for your viewing pleasure: 
Excerpt from "Von morgens bis mitternachts" (1922) based on the 1917 Georg Kaiser play of the same name. We read this play in my drama course this semester.

In pre-WWI Germany, a bored Kassierer (bank teller) steals 60,000 DM and flees to the big city (presumably Berlin) to live large before becoming disillusioned and committing suicide.  In this scene he visits a bicycle race stadium and places huge bets, sending the crowd into an ecstatic frenzy.  The crown prince arrives in his box and the audience falls into a reverent silence. The moment of ecstasy has passed and the Kassierer leaves in disgust.