Faculty of English What’s On: events and talks of interest
Talks:

Thursday 5 February 2025

After Nations: a discussion
Date: 5 February 2026, 12:30 - 14:00
Speaker : Rana Dasgupta (Independent)
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

The Dissenting Atlantic: Archives and Unquiet Libraries, 1776-1865
Date: 5 February 2026, 16:45 - 17:45
Speaker : Bridget Bennett (University of Leeds)
Venue: Rothermere American Institute, 1A South Parks Road OX1 3UB
Venue Details: Downstairs Seminar Room, Rothermere American Institute
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 9 February 2025

“Fairies and Music, Gipsies and Flowers”: Music Pedagogy and Performance in the Nineteenth-Century Convent School
Date: 9 February 2026, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker : Emma Arthur (Oxford)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppard Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

OCCT Discussion Group: Hallucination, Contemplation, and ‘Ideal Realism’: British Romanticism in Dialogue with Daoism
Date: 9 February 2026, 12:45 - 14:00
Speaker : Dr Serena Qihui Pei (UCL)
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Shut Up and Write (or Translate)!
Date: 9 February 2026, 14:00 - 17:00
Speaker
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Tuesday 10 February 2025

1960s/1970s Fantasy
Date: 10 February 2026, 10:00 - 11:00
Speaker : John Garth
Venue Details: Schwarzman Theatre B2.004
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Power and conversion in middle English romance
Date: 10 February 2026, 12:15 - 13:15
Speaker : Dr Kirsty Bolton (University of Oxford)
Venue Details: Room 00.079, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: Professor Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford), Dr Laura Varnam (University College, Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Tolkien's Animism
Date: 10 February 2026, 17:00 - 18:30
Speaker : Erik Jampa Andersson
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Merton Street OX1 4JF
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Cobwebbed Thinking: Margaret Cavendish and the Poetics of the Spiderweb
Date: 10 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Rohit Ghosh (Pembroke)
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10.424, English Faculty, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Wednesday 11 February 2025

Older Scots Reading Group: Palyce of Honour, First Part, ll. 127-771
Date: 11 February 2026, 14:30 - 15:30
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue Details: Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Cent
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

‘On First Noticing Bergman and Kafka'
Date: 11 February 2026, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker : Professor Amit Chaudhuri (Novelist and Poet)
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Merton Street OX1 4JF
Organisers: Professor Peter Boxall (University of Oxford), Dr Elena Violaris (University of Oxford), Professor Santanu Das (University of Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Methodology Workshop
Date: 11 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue Details: Room 10.302, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Jan Wagner and Norbert Hummelt will introduce Tanzt die Orange! 100 Antworten auf Rilke (Hanser 2025).
Date: 11 February 2026, 17:30 - 19:00
Speaker s: Jan Wagner, Norbert Hummelt
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Thursday 12 February 2025

New Granddaughters of Africa: the genealogical sagas of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Namwali Serpell and Yaa Gyasi
Date: 12 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:45
Speaker : Hannah Fagan (Mansfield College)
Venue Details: Room 10.424, English ‘hub’, Schwarzman building.
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 16 February 2025

The Artificial Mother: Inventing Attachment in the Gilded Age
Date: 16 February 2026, 12:15 - 14:00
Speaker : Adelene Buckland (King’s College London)
Venue Details: Room 10.424, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Tuesday 17 February 2025

‘The Wolves of Toleration in Early Modern Religious Controversy’
Date: 17 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker : Karen Edwards (University of Exeter)
Venue: Merton College, Merton Street OX1 4JD
Venue Details: T.S. Eliot lecture theatre
Organisers: Professor Joe Moshenska (University of Oxford), Professor Bart Van Es (University of Oxford), Professor Lorna Hutson (University of Oxfordhttps://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-lorna-hutson)
Hosts: TBA

Trans studies and medieval literatures
Date: 17 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker s: François.e Charmaille (University of Cambridge), Prof. Gareth Evans (University of Oxford)
Venue Details: THE MAISON FRANÇAISE
Organisers: Professor Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford), Dr Laura Varnam (University College, Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

‘... this brilliant assemblage ... ’: The Sociability of Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1821)
Date: 17 February 2026, 17:30 - 18:30
Speaker : Professor Simon Kevosi (University of Glasgow)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Massey Room
Organisers: Prof. Fiona Stafford (University of Oxford), Prof. Seamus Perry (University of Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Wednesday 18 February 2025

Older Scots Reading Group: Palyce of Honour, Seconde Part, ll. 772-1287
Date: 18 February 2026, 14:30 - 15:30
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue Details: Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

'John Ashbery's Boredom' and ‘Serially Late: the Long Poems of Walt Whitman and Nathaniel Mackey’
Date: 18 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:30
Speaker s: Ben Philipps, Lochie Springett
Venue Details: Room 10.424, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

‘Rilke’s Petromodernism: Oil and its Absence in the Sonnets to Orpheus’ (Sonette an Orpheus, II. X).
Date: 18 February 2026, 17:30 - 19:00
Speaker : Frey Kalus
Venue: The Queen's College, High Street OX1 4AW
Venue Details: The Queen’s College, Lecture Room B, Back Quod
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Thursday 19 February 2025

Beyond Stateless Literature? Practices of Democratic Power in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Regionalism
Date: 19 February 2026, 16:45 - 17:45
Speaker : Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité)
Venue: Rothermere American Institute, 1A South Parks Road OX1 3UB
Venue Details: Downstairs Seminar Room, Rothermere American Institute
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 23 February 2025

Setting the Children to Work in Early Modern London: Some Methodological Challenges
Date: 23 February 2026, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker : Ian Archer (Oxford)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppard Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

OCCT Discussion Group: On the Trail of the Detective: Testing a New Comparative Methodology in World Literature
Date: 23 February 2026, 12:45 - 14:00
Speaker : Oliver Eccles (UCL)
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

So strange a dreaminess did there reign’: Herman Melville’s Economies of the Drift
Date: 23 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Dr Christy Wensley (University of Oxford)
Venue Details: Room 10.019, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Tuesday 24 February 2025

‘Motes of gold’: early English poetry and its modern recollection
Date: 24 February 2026, 12:15 - 13:15
Speaker : Elaine Treharne (Stanford)
Venue Details: Room 00.079, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: Professor Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford), Dr Laura Varnam (University College, Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Writerly Hate
Date: 24 February 2026, 12:30 - 13:30
Speaker : Dr Thomas Leonard-Roy (Università degli Studi di Sassari)
Venue Details: Room 00.056, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Beauty and Peril and Sorrow: A Web in Tolkien's Thinking
Date: 24 February 2026, 17:00 - 18:30
Speaker : Anders Stenström
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Merton Street OX1 4JF
Venue Details: Auditorium
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

'She makes each place where she comes a Library': Women Users of Oxbridge University Libraries, 1600-1850
Date: 24 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Emma Sibbald (Trinity)
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10.424, English Faculty, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Wednesday 25 February 2025

Older Scots Reading Group: Palyce of Honour, Seconde Part, ll. 772-1287
Date: 25 February 2026, 14:30 - 15:30
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue Details: Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Interdisciplinary Colloquium
Date: 25 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker
Venue Details: Room 10.302, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

‘James Schuyler's Romanticism: “A little trick I picked up from Bill Coleridge”’
Date: 25 February 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Eric Lindstrom
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers: Professor Peter Boxall (University of Oxford), Dr Elena Violaris (University of Oxford), Professor Santanu Das (University of Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Vergers: Rilke's French Orchard
Date: 25 February 2026, 17:30 - 19:00
Speaker : Stephen Romer
Venue: The Queen's College, High Street OX1 4AW
Venue Details: The Queen’s College, Lecture Room B, Back Quod
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Thursday 26 February 2025

Collaborative creative practice in South African fiction
Date: 26 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:45
Speaker : Caitlin Stobie (Leeds University)
Venue Details: Room 10.424, English ‘hub’, Schwarzman building
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Friday 27 February 2025

Mariusz Szczygieł and Antonia Lloyd-Jones with Linden Editions
Date: 27 February 2026, 17:00 - 18:30
Speaker s: Mariusz Szczygieł, Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 2 March 2025

Shut Up and Write (or Translate)!
Date: 2 March 2026, 14:00 - 17:00
Speaker
Venue: St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details: Seminar Room 10
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Tuesday 3 March 2025

Modes of Remembering in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Fictional World
Date: 3 March 2026, 17:00 - 18:30
Speaker : Mina Lukić Gunner (University of Belgrade)
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Merton Street OX1 4JF
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

'"As if the dead the living should exceed": Unfeeling in Venus and Adonis'
Date: 3 March 2026, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker : Dr Michal Zechariah (University of Oxford)
Venue: Merton College, Merton Street OX1 4JD
Venue Details: T.S. Eliot lecture theatre
Organisers: Professor Joe Moshenska (University of Oxford), Professor Bart Van Es (University of Oxford), Professor Lorna Hutson (University of Oxfordhttps://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-lorna-hutson)
Hosts: TBA

Poetic Fascination and the Metaphysics of Metre
Date: 3 March 2026, 17:30 - 18:30
Speaker : Dr Gregory Leadbetter (Birmingham City University)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Massey Room
Organisers: Prof. Fiona Stafford (University of Oxford), Professor Seamus Perry (University of Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

Wednesday 4 March 2025

"A learner, rather": Did Joyce Really "Teach Us How to Read Ulysses?" and '"Gilding What’s Eyesore": Visual Poetics and Hallucinatory Worlds in Sylvia Plath’s Flower Poems'
Date: 4 March 2026, 17:15 - 18:30
Speaker s: Henry Barlow, Alice Sholto-Douglas
Venue Details: Room 10.424, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

‘Vollmacht’
Date: 4 March 2026, 17:30 - 19:00
Speaker : Charlie Louth
Venue: The Queen's College, High Street OX1 4AW
Venue Details: The Queen’s College, Lecture Room B, Back Quod
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Thursday 5 March 2025

ALRS Book Club: James (2024) by Percival Everett
Date: 5 March 2026, 13:00 - 14:00
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue: Rothermere American Institute, 1A South Parks Road OX1 3UB
Venue Details: Downstairs Seminar Room, Rothermere American Institute
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Planter's Pageantry and the Pedagogy of Gardening
Date: 5 March 2026, 17:15 - 18:45
Speaker : Julia Hori (University of Cambridge)
Venue: Wadham College, Parks Road OX1 3PN
Venue Details: Okinaga Room, Wadham College
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Monday 9 March 2025

Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries in Childhood Studies
Date: 9 March 2026, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker s: Kiera Vaclavik (QMUL), Sophie Ratcliffe (Oxford)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppard Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

OCCT Discussion Group: Teaching the Coloniality of the Climate Crisis in Translation: Indonesian and Dutch Flood Narratives
Date: 9 March 2026, 12:45 - 14:00
Speaker : Lucelle Pardoe (UCL)
Venue Details: Microsoft Teams
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Arthur Conan Doyle and Cornwall
Date: 9 March 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Chris Pittard (University of Portsmouth)
Venue Details: Room 10.019, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Tuesday 10 March 2025

Habitatio est omen - or: like land, like people
Date: 10 March 2026, 17:00 - 18:30
Speaker : Thomas Honegger (Friedrich Schiller University, Jena)
Venue: Corpus Christi College, Merton Street OX1 4JF
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Early Modern English Graduate Forum - Title TBC
Date: 10 March 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker
Venue Details: the Seminar Room 10.424, English Faculty, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

"The Universal Vibration of Life": William Bartram's Swarm Ecology
Date: 10 March 2026, 17:30 - 18:30
Speaker : Sheila Byers (University of Oxford)
Venue Details: Room 00.079, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

Wednesday 11 March 2025

Older Scots Reading Group: Palyce of Honour, Thyrd Part, ll. 1288-2142 & Palyce of Honour, Dedication, ll. 2142-2169
Date: 11 March 2026, 14:30 - 15:30
Speaker Various Speakers
Venue Details: Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

'Moments of unselfing: Rachel Cusk, Amit Chaudhuri, and the new impersonal'
Date: 11 March 2026, 17:15 - 19:00
Speaker : Agota Marton
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers: Professor Peter Boxall (University of Oxford), Dr Elena Violaris (University of Oxford), Professor Santanu Das (University of Oxford)
Hosts: TBA

'Animate Imaginations in Rilke’s Neue Gedichte’ (‘Die Gazelle’, ‘Das Einhorn’, ‘Schwarze Katze’, ‘Der Schwan’)
Date: 11 March 2026, 17:30 - 19:00
Speaker : Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei
Venue: The Queen's College, High Street OX1 4AW
Venue Details: The Queen’s College, Lecture Room B, Back Quod
Organisers: TBA
Hosts: TBA

This list contains talks from the following series:
American Literature Research Seminar
Ars Memoriae – Memory Studies Reading Group
Caribbean Studies Network
Celtic Research Seminar
Centre for the History of Childhood Seminars and Events
'Channels of Digital Scholarship' Seminar I: New tools and old questions in the analysis of textual corpora
Clarendon Lectures in English - English from Below: The Rise and Fall of a Discipline
Creative Writing Seminar Series
Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Events
Early Modern English Literature Seminar
Early Modern Graduate Forum
Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture Research Seminar
Environmental Humanities Lunchtime Seminar Series
Fantasy Literature Seminar Series
Feminist Thinking Seminars
Fiction and Other Minds seminar
History of Gender Seminar
Imagining Belief
Inaugural Lecture from Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, Helen Small
Inaugural Lecture from Professor of Poetry, Alice Oswald
Interdisciplinary Early Modern Graduate Workshop
Interdisciplinary Reading Group on Authenticity
Interdisciplinary Visual Culture Studies Group
Kantian Aesthetics
Kellogg Centre for Creative Writing
Laura Marcus Workshop
Literature and History in Early Modern Britain Seminar
Literature and History in Early Modern Britain Seminar
Literature and History in Early Modern Britain Seminar (online)
Literature and Mental Health
Medieval English Research Seminar
Medieval English Research Seminar
Modern and Contemporary Graduate Forum
Modern and Contemporary Literature Graduate Forum
Modern and Contemporary Literature Research Seminar
Nineteenth-Century Graduate Forum
Nineteenth Century Research Seminar
Old English Graduate Reading Group
Old English Reading Group
Older Scots Reading Group
Old Norse Research Seminar
Oxford Comics Network
Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation
Oxford Medieval Commentary Network, Interdisciplinary Seminar Series, Hilary 2023
Oxford Medieval Commentary Network, Trinity Term Lecture Series
Oxford Study Skills Centre Michaelmas '19 Talk Series
Poetry and Christianity since 1918: reading group
Poetry at Keble
Postcolonial and World Literatures Seminar
Reading Rorty
Rilke: Centenary Readings
Romantic Research Seminar
Theory Reading Group
The Princeton University Press Lecture Series in European History and Culture
The Relation of Literature and Learning to Social Hierarchy in Early Modern Europe
Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series
Tolkien seminars
TORCH Environmental Humanities Lunchtime Seminars
TORCH HUMOUR NETWORK: WRITING GROUP MEETINGS
TORCH Princeton University Press Lecture Series 2025
Writing Jewish Women’s Lives Seminar Series