British Studies Lecture Series British Studies Lecture Series

Paula Marantz Cohen DREXEL UNIVERSITY How can decline in enrollments in the humanities be explained? Nationwide in recent years estimates of the drop in liberal arts majors range from one-fourth to one-third of those in English, history, government, philosophy and other traditional subjects. English departments have been hit especially hard. One study found that faculty members seem to […]

Aaron Pratt HARRY RANSOM CENTER Before the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio in 1623 and the efforts of subsequent editors and critics, England’s printed playbooks were considered “riff raff,” connected more with the world of London’s popular theaters than with what we might think of as “capital-L” Literature. Or so we have been told. This […]

Tancred Bradshaw LONDON One of the surprises of Britain’s withdrawal from the Middle East was the successful creation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971. Tancred Bradshaw will discuss the critical role played by Sir William Luce, previously Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Aden Colony, in that transition. Luce was responsible for establishing a viable […]

Philip Goad is the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies (AY2019-20) at Harvard University and Chair of Architecture and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the University of Melbourne. He was trained as an architect and gained his PhD in architectural history at the University of Melbourne where he has taught since […]

The London Review of Books was founded in 1979 during a strike at The Times that prevented the publication of the Times Literary Supplement. By the time the dispute at The Times was settled, two issues of the LRB had been published. At the beginning there was only a small circulation. A large proportion of […]

Thomas Ricks NEW YORK TIMES   If the best measure of a general is the ability to grasp the nature of the war he faces, and then to make adjustments, George Washington was one of the greatest the United States ever had. This is not perceived even today because he had few victories during the […]