The University of Oxford's 2025 Open Days will be held on Wednesday 2, Thursday 3 July, and Friday 19 September.
On these dates, the English Faculty will be open from 9.30am to 4pm. All talks will take place in the English Faculty building, on the corner of St Cross and Manor Roads.
You can register for the Open Days on the University website. Registration for our Open Days is not compulsory, but you will receive lots of useful information about the event and about applying for undergraduate study at Oxford.
Provisional programme for talks at the English Faculty:
10.00am - 10.30am: MINI LECTURE: 'Science and Victorian Fiction', Professor Michael H. Whitworth
Literature and science are often treated as if they are fundamentally different, but they have in common the need to relate the unfamiliar to the familiar through metaphors and similes, and the need to make sense of events by placing them into a narrative sequence. In this lecture, I will consider points of contact between Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and two Victorian novels, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
10.40am - 11.10am: MINI LECTURE: 'Was J. R. R. Tolkien writing Fantasy?', Professor Stuart Lee
This taster lecture is based around one of Oxford’s most famous alumni and academics – J. R. R. Tolkien. In the English faculty we run a series of seminars and lectures on fantasy literature which we see as an important emerging genre that is present in multiple media – novels, short stories, graphic novels, films, games, and so on. This lecture is part of a series of talks introducing fantasy literature, critical approaches to it, and the main writers and texts. In this lecture we will look at a brief definition of fantasy literature and consider Tolkien as a fantasy writer and with reference to books like ‘The Lord of the Rings’ how he accomplishes his ambitions around world-building and secondary belief.
11.20am - 12.00pm: INFORMATION TALK: ENGLISH AT OXFORD
12.00 - 2.00pm: LUNCH BREAK
2.30pm - 3.10pm: INFORMATION TALK: ENGLISH AT OXFORD (repeated talk)
3.20pm - 4.00pm: JOINT SCHOOLS Q&A SESSIONS - STUDYING ENGLISH WITH HISTORY, CLASSICS, OR MODERN LANGUAGES.
Staff and current students will be present throughout the day to answer questions about the course, studying at Oxford, and the application process. We welcome students interested in joint schools (English and History; English and Classics; English and Modern Languages) to all of our talks.
The English Faculty Library will also be open throughout the day. The Library holds the University’s main student lending collections for English Language and Literature, including American and postcolonial literatures.
Parents are welcome to attend the Open Days, but to avoid overcrowding we would ask that they do not attend the lectures and talks scheduled in the morning. However, there is sometimes space available in the afternoon sessions. No booking is required.
You can find directions to the English Faculty at: http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/contact-us/directions-map
Any questions? Please email the English Faculty Outreach Co-ordinator at outreach@ell.ox.ac.uk
