BRASENOSE COLLEGE
9-HOUR STIPENDIARY LECTURERSHIP IN ENGLISH
Further particulars
The College
Brasenose College is one of the older foundations in the University of Oxford. Originating in one of the medieval halls of the University – the gate of which was presumably adorned by the still-surviving ‘brazen nose’, or sanctuary door-knocker – it was founded by royal charter as the King’s Hall and College of Brasenose in 1509 and has just celebrated its Quincentenary.
The College has some 360 undergraduates and 200 graduates. There are 44 Fellows on the Governing Body and a further 22 Senior and Junior Research Fellows and 35 Lecturers. There is a non-academic staff of about 80. Brasenose is one of the medium-sized Oxford colleges and is known for its friendly atmosphere.
The College is a self-governing institution. The ultimate authority for all decisions rests with the Principal and Fellows. The Governing Body is serviced by a structure of committees, including the Academic Committee, concerned with academic policy and administration, and the Finance Committee and the General Purposes Committee, concerned with other aspects of the management of the College.
The College values academic excellence and is concerned to foster research as well as high-quality teaching. It has a substantial library, mainly for undergraduate use, including a separate Law library, and well-developed IT provision. This is an exciting time for the College as it has just celebrated its Quincentenary, and a number of new academic initiatives are planned.
The objectives of the College are to:
- contribute to providing an excellent education for high-ability undergraduates;
- support the University’s graduate programmes within the College framework;
- promote research and scholarship;
- provide pastoral care and material support to all members engaged in education and research;
- establish and maintain links with all those interested in supporting its activities;
- enhance and pass on to future generations its inherited values and assets.
Detailed information about Brasenose College may be found at
The Appointment
Brasenose College wishes to appoint a 9-hour stipendiary lecturer in English with effect from 1 January 2011 for one year. The appointment will terminate on 31 December 2011.
BrasenoseCollege has a strong tradition in English. There are currently two fellows, Dr Sos Eltis, who specializes in Victorian and Modern literature, and Dr Simon Palfrey, who specializes in the Renaissance through to the eighteenth century. The appointee would be replacing Dr Eltis while she is on sabbatical leave. Brasenose admits approximately 7 undergraduates a year to study English Language and Literature, and two or three in the Joint Schools of English and Modern Languages and Classics and English. The college has an excellent record of results in English, with Brasenose undergraduates having secured four university prizes in recent years. The college also has a number of very good graduate students studying for the M.St. and D.Phil. in English.
Duties
The person appointed will work alongside Dr Palfrey and the college lecturer in Medieval English. The appointee will be expected to play a major and active part in the life of the College, sharing in the general responsibilities towards English teaching. These include the teaching of undergraduates, participation in the annual round of undergraduate admissions and in access initiatives and open days, setting and marking internal examinations, and the general administration (including pastoral care) associated with work in the tutorial system.
The tutorial stint will be nine hours per week during full term and in so far as is possible the tutorial stint should be fulfilled with tutorials to Brasenose. If this is not possible, teaching should be sought from other colleges and the fees paid to BrasenoseCollege. With the permission of the Senior Tutor, a reasonable amount of teaching in excess of the stint may also be undertaken for other colleges, in which case the Fellow will receive additional remuneration from those colleges at the standard per capita rate.
The person appointed will be expected to be able to teach first-year papers on Victorian Literature (1832-1900), Modern Literature (1900 to the present day), and An Introduction to Literary Studies, and relevant first- and third-year options. An outline of these papers is given below, and further details of the Oxford English course can be found on and
MODERATIONS (1st-year undergraduates):
Paper 1. Introduction to Literary Studies
This paper is intended to introduce you to English literature as a discipline, and to a variety of approaches to reading literary texts and literary criticism. It will acquaint you with a wide range of theoretical issues and reading skills, but in doing so seeks to encourage you to think for yourself and to subject them to critical scrutiny. There is a course of core lectures in the Examination Schools which run weekly through Michaelmas and Hilary terms. Colleges will normally supplement these by eight college classes spread over those two terms, and by giving opportunities to practice written work. The lectures will be illustrated by examples from the list of core texts given below. Please note that these are not set texts – they are intended to provide a common core of material to facilitate comprehension of discussion in lectures. You should read these texts in order to follow the lectures. Lecturers may also use other illustrative material and students can access lecture material from WebLearn. The core texts will not be used as the basis for examination questions.
The exam paper (three hours) will consist of two sections and candidates must answer one question from each. Section A will consist of questions on conceptual issues and critical approaches and will require you to write an essay answer. Section B will contain passages from a variety of sources: alongside literary texts there will be, for instance, critical essays, drama reviews, or interviews with authors. You will be required to write a commentary, in response to a directed rubric, on at least one of these passages (most questions, however, will require comparison of two passages). The rubric for the commentary passages will address specific critical issues and/or critical approaches. Previous examination papers are available which will be helpful to show what is needed both for answering essay questions, and for the commentary section of the paper.
Core texts
i)King James Bible (Genesis, St John’s Gospel)
ii) Shakespeare, The Tempest
iii) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Paper 2. Victorian or Modern Literature
(a) Victorian Literature (English Literature, 1832-1900)
The essay questions in the examination tend to be based on topics, rather than authors. This
gives students the opportunity to write across a range of authors, focusing on some of the major preoccupations, both thematic and stylistic, of the period. Alternatively, students may choose to focus each of your examination answers on the work of only one or two, authors. Issues that students might choose to cover could include (for example) the development of realism; responses to industrialism; women's writing; concepts of identity and selfhood; guilt and transgression; memory, and uses of the past; verbal and metrical experimentation; attitudes towards race and Empire; class; domesticity; writing for children and the treatment of childhood; romance; popular fiction, and the relationship between literature and art. Among the authors you might consider studying are Dickens, the Brontës, George Eliot, Hardy (the novels), Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Arnold, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, Hopkins, Henry James, Collins, Thackeray, Clough, Patmore, Carlyle, Ruskin, Pater, Gaskell, Gissing, Braddon, Shaw, Meredith, Carroll, and R. L. Stevenson. Students will be expected to show substantial knowledge of the work of at least three authors.
(b) Modern Literature (English Literature 1900-Present Day)
The essay questions in the examination tend to be based on topics, rather than authors. This
gives students the opportunity to write across a range of authors, focusing on some of the major thematic and stylistic preoccupations of the period. Alternatively students may choose to focus each of your examination answers on the work of only one or two authors. Issues that students might choose to cover could include (for example) ideas of literary language, postcolonialism, literary experimentalism, primitivism, national (and other) identities, popular culture, concepts of literary value, journalism, gender and writing, intertextuality, literature and other art forms, technology, modernism, post-modernism, innovations in modern theatre, and ideas of the self. Among the authors students might consider studying are Achebe, Amis (father and son), Atwood, Auden, Beckett, Bowen, Carter, Coetzee, Conrad, T.S.Eliot, Forster, Friel, Golding, Greene, Hardy (the poems), Heaney, Hill, Hughes, Joyce, Kipling, Larkin, Lawrence, Lessing, Naipaul, Ondaatje, Orwell, Osborne, Pinter, Plath, the poets of the two World Wars, Pound, Rushdie, Shaw, Stoppard, Dylan Thomas, Walcott, Waugh, Woolf, and Yeats. Students will be expected to show substantial knowledge of the work of at least three authors.
Selection Criteria
The selection criteria for the post are:
1. Education and training at the first-degree and postgraduate level in the appropriate areas of English.
2. Relevant teaching experience at undergraduate level.
3. Evidence of an ability to provide a high standard of tutorial teaching across the whole range of student abilities in relevant areas of English, and of a willingness to share in the supervision of the undergraduates’ academic studies.
4. Evidence of an ability and willingness to participate in the full range of pastoral and organizational tasks associated with the subject in the college.
Remuneration
Stipend. Depending on qualifications and experience, the successful candidate will be appointed at an appropriate level within points 1–5 of the University’s recommended Stipendiary Lecturership scale (£18,205 - £20,489). The figure will be adjusted in line with any reviews of academic salaries that may occur during the tenure of the post.
Allowances. The Lecturer will be entitled to claim the following allowances from Brasenose:
1. Hospitality allowance (for entertaining students): up to £210 per annum.
2. Academic allowance (to support teaching and research): up to £273 per annum.
Lunches and dinners will be available free of charge at the Common Table in BrasenoseCollege.
Medical Questionnaire
The appointment is subject to the satisfactory completion of a medical questionnaire.
Pension
The person appointed will be eligible to be a member of the Universities’ Superannuation Scheme. The College will pay the employer’s contribution for this scheme but not for any other scheme.
Creche Facilities
There are two university nurseries, with 74 places for children from four months to five years: about half of the places are reserved for nominees of the University Press and certain colleges. Brasenose may nominate to one place – currently taken up. Enquiries about the nurseries themselves and requests for application forms, should be directed in the first instance to the Nursery Manager, Mansion House Nursery, Summertown House, Oxford, OX2 7QZ. In other respects the University Childcare Officer may be able to help, and may be contacted at the University Offices, Wellington, Square, Oxford, OX1 2JD.
Equal Opportunities
The Colleges are committed to the principle of equality of opportunity in employment, and operate an Equal Opportunities Policy and Code of Practice. The Brasenose College Policy reads:
The Statutes of the College require that the Governing Body elect to a Fellowship only the candidate whom it considers best qualified for the post with which the Fellowship is associated. The policy and practice of the College extend this requirement to all other appointments. Accordingly, entry into employment with the College and progression within employment will be determined only by personal merit and the application of criteria which are related to the duties of each particular post and the relevant salary structure. Subject to statutory provisions, no applicant or member of staff will be treated less favourably than another because of his or her sex, marital status, or racial group.
Timetable for applications and appointment
The timetable for making the appointment is as follows:
(a) The final date for the receipt of applications and references is Friday 4 June 2010.
(b)A short-list will be drawn up on Monday 7th June 2010. Candidates are asked to
provide a telephone or fax number, or e-mail address, indicating where they can be reached on that day and the following day.
(c)Interviews will be held in the week beginning 14 June 2010.(exact date subject to confirmation). Brasenose can offer accommodation for candidates if required.
Applications in writing, including details of qualifications, publications, teaching experience, special interests and a brief curriculum vitae, should be sent to the Senior Tutor’sSecretary, Brasenose College, Oxford, OX1 4AJ (tel: 01865 277515; fax: 01865 277822; email: ) as soon as possible, together with the names and addresses of three referees. Candidates should ask their referees to write direct to the Senior Tutor’s Secretary by the closing date of Friday 4th June 2010.
Dr Sos Eltis would be happy to discuss the post informally with anyone who might be interested. She can be contacted by email:
BRASENOSECOLLEGE, OXFORD
STIPENDIARY LECTURERSHIP IN ENGLISH
Candidates are requested to complete this form for the information of the appointing committee
- Name in full:
- Date of birth: 3. Nationality
4. Are you eligible to work in the UK? YES / NO. If NO, do you require a visa/work permit?
5. Present post/occupation:
6. Degrees held with dates:
7. Permanent postal address and telephone number:
8. Address, telephone, fax and email address where you can be contacted during June 2010:
9. Names, addresses and e-mails of the three referees who have been asked to write direct to the College Secretary, Brasenose College, Oxford, OX1 4AJ by the closing date of Friday 4th June 2010.
Referee 1:
Referee 2:
Referee 3:
10. Please enclose a curriculum vitae, to include details of your academic teaching and general record and publications. If there is any unpublished material that you think the committee could usefully consider, please list it also.
11. Please indicate in which publication you saw this advertisement:
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