Seminars
Participants are taught in small seminar groups of up to 10 students, and receive two one-on-one tutorials with their tutor.
Sunday
Seminar 1:
An introductory overview of the class system in modern English history and historiography: tracing its rise and supposed decline by the end of the 20th century. The problematic nature of ‘class’ in the Celtic British nations.
Seminar 2:
Seventeenth century challenges to the social hierarchy in England were largely inspired by the tenets of Christianity and as critiques of the institutions of monarchy, aristocracy and the established church. The civil wars provided rich ground for the spread of sects promoting social and gender equality.
Monday
Seminar 3:
The ‘making’ of the English working class. E. P. Thompson’s classic analysis of the eighteenth-century dawn of class consciousness among the English labouring population forms the starting point for a survey of the historical debates over the validity of class as a form of historical explanation.
Seminar 4:
The rise of the middle classes: the enormous wealth flowing into the country from empire and the rapid expansion of home industries created a consumer society, served by innumerable small businesses. Through the political power property owners gained through the franchise reform acts of the nineteenth century, they became an important political voice in the nation. Those who had already achieved status as middle class through their professions and wealth aspired to join the upper classes, and even the aristocracy, through honours or marriage.
Tuesday
Seminar 5:
Class and the Victorian novel: from Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens to Thomas Hardy. Novelists of the nineteenth century both reflected their society and introduced their readers to new ways of understanding it.
Seminar 6:
‘Toffs’, 1880 – 1914. Late Victorian and Edwardian society featured a new breed of aristocrat encouraged by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII: commercial, sporting, of relatively modest family origins, and liberal in their political views. Their wealth drove the formation of a new political oligarchy, unsympathetic to the old aristocracy but resistant to further democratisation.
Wednesday
Seminar 7:
The politicisation of the working class. From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, the working classes found an increasingly powerful political voice, owing to successive voting franchise reforms, improved education and collective bargaining through strike action. By the 1920s outright class warfare seemed imminent.
Seminar 8:
War socialism 1914 – 1918 and 1939 – 1945: during both world wars social distinctions became blurred as men and women from all backgrounds occupied positions according to the demands of total war rather than of peacetime requirements.
Thursday
Seminar 9:
Class and the twentieth century novel: from H. G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and Kenneth Grahame to Virginia Woolf, Ian Fleming and Martin Amis novelists explored the shifting complexities of class identities and relations.
Seminar 10:
1945-1990: From the middle-class paradigm to the Thatcher revolution, ‘one-nation’ Toryism sought to redefine British society as a unity of patriotic, aspirational individuals. Margaret Thatcher’s government promoted the notion of a new entrepreneurial class, open to anyone with initiative. Working class radicalism was tempered by growing affluence. Meanwhile, a homeless ‘underclass’ grew in numbers and were largely ignored.
Friday
Seminar 11:
Tony Blair and ‘Cool Britannia’: dawn of a classless society? The whole concept of class was largely abandoned by the generation that grew up from the 1960s to the 1980s. Broadly cynical about established authority, many accepted the idea that Britain was ‘a messy, muddled collection of peoples, united only by a lack of unity’ (Alwyn Turner, A Classless Society).
Seminar 12:
Social class in the 21st century. The series concludes with an assessment of the relevance, if any, of social class in the present century. Have claims of its demise been premature?
Programme timetable
The daily timetable will normally be as follows:
Saturday
14.00–16.30 - Registration
16.30–17.00 - Orientation meeting
17.00–17.30 - Classroom orientation for tutor and students
17.30–18.00 - Drinks reception
18.00–20.00 - Welcome dinner
Sunday – Friday
09.00–10.30 - Seminar
10.30–11.00 - Tea/coffee break
11.00–12.30 - Seminar
12.30–13.30 - Lunch
13.30–18.00 - Afternoons are free for tutorials, individual study, course-related field trips or exploring the many places of interest in and around Oxford.
18.00–19.00 - Dinner (there is a formal gala dinner every Friday to close each week of the programme).
A range of optional social events will be offered throughout the summer school. These are likely to include: a quiz night, visit to historic pubs in Oxford, visit to Christ Church for Evensong and after-dinner talks and discussions.
