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Courses taught at the Paul Mellon Centre cover British literature,
drama, history, and history of art and of architecture. Students may
apply for Yale-in-London without regard to their declared or intended
major. Literature and drama classes fall in Group I of Yale academic
subjects for distribution requirement purposes, and courses in history,
history of art and of architecture fall in Group II.
Courses are taught
by the Yale faculty based at the Paul Mellon Centre, by professors
visiting from Yale and by leading British academics. They take full
advantage of the unique facilities a great city such as London has
to offer: the outstanding theatres and fringe scene, art galleries,
fantastic historic architecture, and buildings associated with poets,
novelists, playwrights and with the very fabric of British and world
history.
Fieldwork visits form an important part of all courses and
for each program there will be a residential field trip to relevant
and exciting locations outside London or even elsewhere in Europe.
More detail on the Program in general and on the courses below can
be found on the Paul Mellon Centre’s Web
site.
January 18, 2010 to April 30, 2010
BRITISH ART AND LANDSCAPE (BRST 177b) Martin Postle, Assistant Director for Academic Activities, Paul Mellon Centre
This course explores the development of landscape art in the period from the Restoration to the mid-nineteenth century. During this period, the face of British landscape changed irrevocably, as cities encroached increasingly upon the countryside, population patterns shifted, attitudes to the occupancy and ownership of land were keenly contested, and political boundaries were redrawn. Increasingly, artists played a key role in the interpretation of attitudes towards landscape; initially as agents of the landed aristocracy, and later as independent observers. In order to explore the relationship between art and landscape over this two-hundred year period, the course will address the subject both thematically and chronologically.
Topics will include country house and 'prospect' landscapes, the landscaped garden, Britain and Italy, academic landscapes, town and cityscapes, travel and topography, the Romantic landscape, and the Pre-Raphaelite landscape. Readings for the course will encompass key modern art-historical texts on British landscape art, as well as contemporary accounts of landscape, including essays, journals and poems.
As the course will be offered in London it will take full advantage of landscape art available in museums and art galleries, notably the National Gallery, Tate Britain, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1688-1832 (BRST 322b) Dr. Leslie Mitchell, University College, Oxford (retired)
This course will cover what is called the “long eighteenth century” in all its political and cultural aspects. Its core will be an investigation of the period’s politics; from the Glorious Revolution, through the oligarchical structures put in place by Walpole and the Pelhams, to the Reform Bill of 1832. The impact of the American and French Revolutions will also be addressed as will the problems presented by Ireland and India. Politics will also be covered at a more theoretical level, by considering the ideas which both justified the rule of property, and also those which called for significant change.
In cultural terms, there will be discussions of eighteenth-century marriage and divorce, together with the notions of gender that informed such issues. Attitudes to crime, the major religious movements of the period, and the advance of consumerism and its social consequences will also be considered. There will also be a discussion of what is called the “culture of politeness”, namely the cult of the gentleman, honour codes, and the forces that threatened them.
AMERICANS ABROAD (BRST 175b) Susan Chambers, Department of English, Yale University
This course focuses on American writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who left their homes in America and settled in London and Paris to partake of the cosmopolitan culture abroad.
The course is divided into three units. First: Henry James, the great novelist from Boston who moved to England in his thirties and became a British citizen just before his death in 1916, and who hoped to render it "impossible to an outsider to say whether I am, at a given moment, an American writing about England or an Englishman writing about America."
Second: T. S. Eliot (from St. Louis) and Ezra Pound (from Idaho via Pennsylvania), two iconoclastic young poets whose collaboration on The Waste Land and joint stewardship in London of a new poetic movement set the terms for what it would mean to be "modern."
Third: a final unit on the "Lost Generation" in Paris, focusing on Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, and the circle of artists and writers they gathered around them.
The goals of the course will be to assess what "home" and "abroad" meant for these expatriate writers, to trace the emergence of the modernist literary revolution out of nineteenth-century standards and styles, and to explore the ways in which the transatlantic perspective shaped the modernist movement. Our readings will include novels, poems, memoirs, and essays by the writers on whom we focus, as well as some secondary readings. We will take advantage of the wealth of resources in London that might help us to imagine the literary and cultural scene in the first few decades of the twentieth century.
Note: This course will include a four-day field trip to Paris.
THE LONDON STAGE (BRST 176b) Susan Chambers, Department of English, Yale University
This course in contemporary drama is organized around plays being produced in London in a variety of venues, in the theaters of the West End as well as on the fringe and in ad hoc performance spaces. The course functions as an introduction to the study of drama, acquainting students with the critical terminology and interpretive questions that are particular to this genre, as well as introducing them to key developments in the history of the theater. Issues we will explore include spatial aesthetics, ways of telling stories on the stage, the relationship between actor and audience, styles of acting and other aspects of theatrical mimesis, the re-interpretation of old plays, and the function of theater in society. The work for the course includes regular theater attendance and reading assignments as well as frequent writing assignments.
Please note: the above information is subject to change.
June 14, 2010 – July 23, 2010
BRITISH ART AND LANDSCAPE (BRST 177c)
Martin Postle, Assistant Director for Academic Activities, Paul Mellon Centre
This course explores the development of landscape art in the period from the Restoration to the mid-nineteenth century. During this period, the face of British landscape changed irrevocably, as cities encroached increasingly upon the countryside, population patterns shifted, attitudes to the occupancy and ownership of land were keenly contested, and political boundaries were redrawn. Increasingly, artists played a key role in the interpretation of attitudes towards landscape; initially as agents of the landed aristocracy, and later as independent observers. In order to explore the relationship between art and landscape over this two-hundred year period, the course will address the subject both thematically and chronologically. Topics will include country house and 'prospect' landscapes, the landscaped garden, Britain and Italy, academic landscapes, town and cityscapes, travel and topography, the Romantic landscape, and the Pre-Raphaelite landscape.
Readings for the course will encompass key modern art-historical texts on British landscape art, as well as contemporary accounts of landscape, including essays, journals and poems. As the course will be offered in London it will take full advantage of landscape art available in museums and art galleries, notably the National Gallery, Tate Britain, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The course will also include a three-day field trip which will enable students to compare at first hand a number of important landscape locations with works they have studied in class and in art galleries
MODERN BRITISH DRAMA (BRST 478c)
Sheila Fox, Freelance critic and BBC Producer
A study of representative works of twentieth and twenty-first century British drama, based on current productions on the London stage, with attention to the social issues the plays address as well as theatrical conventions developed by playwrights and actors both on the fringe and in the mainstream of the West End.
Weekly visits to a variety of productions at London theatres are included as an essential element of this course.
July 12, 2010 to Friday, August 20, 2010
SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN LONDON FROM STOW TO HOGARTH c. 1560-1760 (BRST 173c). Professor Keith Wrightson, Yale University, Department of History
Between 1560 and 1760 London grew from a modest city of c. 70,000 inhabitants to a metropolis of over 700,000 people - the largest city in Europe and the hub of an expanding British world. This course will examine a range of aspects of this transformation, focusing upon the development of a distinctive urban society and culture. Themes will include London's growth; birth and death (including the plague); migration; household life; 'villages' within the city; London as the center of print culture; the royal court; 'polite society' in West End; the 'middle sort of people' and 'consumerism'; the world of the poor; vice and criminality. Readings will include selections from the secondary literature and many primary sources. In addition, students will undertake original research exercises on sources provided in the course packet or available online.
THE HISTORY OF SUBURBAN IDEAS AND PRACTICES IN ENGLAND FROM REGENTS PARK TO MILTON KEYNES (BRST 174c). Professor Jay Gitlin, Yale University, Department of History
This seminar will examine the origins of the modern Anglo-American suburb in the country houses of London merchants in the 18th century and the work of architects and landscape designers such as John Nash and Capability Brown. Topics include the impact of mass transit and the automobile, the evolution of domestic space, the advent of multiples and malls, and housing and New Towns legislation in the twentieth century. Readings will include Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1898) and depictions of suburban life in the work of English writers such as George Orwell (Coming up for Air) and Julian Barnes (Metroland).
Field trips would include visits to Regent’s Park and Nash’s Park Village West, the charming late nineteenth-century London rail suburb of Hampstead (home to many artists and millionaires), the garden city of Letchworth, and Milton Keynes New Town (built in l967). If possible, we might visit the new village of Poundbury, Dorset – inspired by the traditionalist ideas of Charles, Prince of Wales and the American New Urbanism movement—and the model industrial village of Bournville, founded by the Cadbury family and still the site of chocolate production.
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