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St Anne's College

University of Oxford

Photograph of the Ruth Deech Building (detail of the lift tower)
 

Why choose St Anne's?

Why choose St Anne's?

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50 Woodstock, where most English classes and tutorials are held.
50 Woodstock, where most English classes and tutorials are held.

St Anne’s has always been strong for English. Writers such as Iris Murdoch, Helen Fielding and Zoë Heller studied here; other graduates, including Dame Gillian Beer, have gone on to become leading international scholars.

Today, St Anne’s is unique in Oxford in having four full-time Tutorial Fellows in English: Sam Thompson, Freya Johnston, Siân Grønlie, and Matthew Reynolds. Our research and teaching span the whole syllabus from Old English to the present: you can find out about us by clicking on the links at the right of this page. We take about ten undergraduates each year for Single-Honours English, and up to four more for the Joint Schools of Classics and English and English and Modern Languages; we also have thriving groups of graduate students and of American visiting students.

At St Anne's, we teach in whatever combination of one-to-one tutorials, pairs and small classes best suits our students and the topic. You will usually be studying and writing essays for one to two papers each term, and will therefore have one to two College tutorials a week, supplemented by one or two small College classes (typically, in groups of no more than six). Work on plays may involve an element of performance; work on Victorian writing will include a mini-conference on the art and culture of the period.  You will also benefit from attending some of the many optional lectures held in the English Faculty (a separate University building five minutes' walk away across the park).

We teach with equal commitment across the whole span of literary culture, from 21st Century blogging to Old Norse. In their second and third years, some of our undergraduates may opt to study 'Course II'  which allows them to develop an expertise in Old and Middle English, to work closely with medieval manuscripts, and to choose from a wide range of other options such as Anglo-Saxon archaeology and Norse mythology.

Old Norse window in St Anne's Library.
Old Norse window in St Anne's Library.

Dr Andrew Klevan, University Lecturer in Film Studies, is a fellow here. He runs the film option which any English undergraduate may take in their third year; and he offers regular screenings-with-commentary to students at St Anne's. Other members of our fellowship are Kathryn Sutherland, the Professor of Bibliography (i.e. the study of texts and their transmission), Professor Sally Shuttleworth, a noted scholar of Victorian literature, and Dr Rebekah Scott, our junior research fellow, who is an expert in the work of Henry James.  

All of us here are interested in how English interacts with other media (e.g. Art, Film) and with writing in other languages: we work closely with our colleagues in Modern Languages and Classics and enjoy teaching the Joint Honours courses English and Modern Languages and Classics and English.  Each year the Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature spends a term or so at St Anne’s (recent incumbents have included Umberto Eco, Mario Vargas Llosa and Amos Oz); we host the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, a national literary award designed to celebrate the translation of European literature into English, and the News International Lectures in Broadcast Media.

As an undergraduate at St Anne's you will be part of a stimulating, outward-looking intellectual community. You might get involved in LitSoc (the student literary society) and attend our interdisciplinary ‘Subject Family’ seminars. Or perhaps you will join a creative writing group; or, like many of our undergraduates, become active in student drama, journalism, or film-making. But above all you will enjoy reading, discussing, and writing about literature. You will relish exploring our College Library, one of the best-stocked in Oxford, and an unparalleled resource for undergraduate study in English.

English students come to us from every kind of educational background in the UK and beyond. You will find that your tutors are committed to helping you develop your own interests, and that your ideas will spark off those of others in your year. Recent English graduates have gone on to teach at inner-city schools; to lecture at universities; to work as journalists, writers, translators, actors and musicians, and in radio, theatre, film and television.

Follow this link for a student's view of English at St Anne's.