Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic continues to be very proud of its association with the Sutton Trust, a philanthropic organisation which seeks to promote social mobility through education. Each year we host a Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC for a small group of talented young people, from non-privileged backgrounds, who are about to begin their final year of school. The purpose of the Summer School is to allow them to experience university life, attending a range of lectures, seminars and classes on all aspects of the ASNC undergraduate course: from Anglo-Saxon history to Old Norse literature, from palaeography to medieval Welsh law. This year we welcomed eleven teenagers from a wide geographical area, including students from Wales, Yorkshire and London, all of whom were bright, enthusiastic and willing to sacrifice a week of their summer holiday in order to learn about all things medieval.

The Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC, 2012

One of the highlights of the Summer School, as ever, was the afternoon spent in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College. The Parker sub-librarian, Dr Suzanne Paul, introduced the students to the Parker collection, and then the students spent an hour preparing presentations on manuscripts including the Parker Chronicle and the Old English Bede. After giving their presentations, the students had the opportunity to study the manuscripts in detail, as well as looking at other important items from the collection.

Admiring medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library

In Old Court, Corpus Christi College

 

Participants also had the opportunity to experience a supervision, the small-group teaching which is characteristic of Oxford and Cambridge. Each of them had chosen the topic in which they were most interested, and were supervised individually or in pairs by doctoral students and early career researchers in the ASNC department.

 

Finding Anglo-Saxon things to stand in front of ...

 

During the Summer School the students stayed at St John's College, and were able to indulge in typical Cambridge activities, such as punting on the river and attending a 'formal hall' dinner. We hope very much that this week will inspire them to apply to elite universities, such as Cambridge, for their undergraduate studies.

The grown-ups (allegedly): Ollie (residential supervisor), Becky (CAMbassador and ASNC graduate), and Lizzie (academic co-ordinator of the Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC)

And, despite the fact that most of the students had never studied a word of Latin before they arrived on the course, the expert teaching of Dr Rosalind Love ensured that, by the time of the disco on the last night of the Summer School, they were all able to get into trouble for swearing profusely in Insular Latin. No matter what the participants go on to do in life, that is one invaluable skill which will always stay with them.

Obituaries

Ray Page: obituaries published in the Daily Telegraph (22nd March) and The Times (23rd March) have celebrated the career of Prof. Ray Page. The link to the Telegraph obituary is here; the Times obituary can only be accessed by subscribers.

Ursula Donke: sadly, another eminent Cambridge-based medievalist has passed away in recent weeks, namely Ursula Dronke, the distinguished scholar of Old Norse literature. An obituary, published in the Guardian, can be found here.

Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

From 17th - 20th August, the ASNC Department hosted our first Sutton Trust Summer School in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic. The students who took part came from state schools all over the country, from Barnsley to Ross-on-Wye, Stockport to Peterborough, in order to experience life as an undergraduate at Cambridge. The School began with an introduction to Anglo-Saxon History from Prof. Simon Keynes, followed by an introduction to the Vikings from our Head of Department, Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh. As in the case of real undergraduate study, the information gained in these lectures was then consolidated in small-group supervisions on Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age History, led by PhD students and Junior Research Fellows in the ASNC Department. In the afternoon, Dr Richard Dance introduced the students to the basics of the Old English and Old Norse languages, and again this was consolidated in supervisions which focused on Old English and Old Norse literature.

The second day began with an introduction to medieval Welsh language and literature from Dr Paul Russell. This involved lessons in how to hang a mouse in medieval Welsh (and if this makes no sense to you, I suggest you read the Mabinogi). Afterwards, I gave a seminar on medieval Irish literature, which included some lively discussion on the 'Death of Conchobar'. In the afternoon the students were given a research assignment in the reading room of the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, which resulted in some superb presentations on some of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh manuscripts in the Parker collection. The students then had the opportunity to see at first hand the manuscripts they had researched and spoken about.

The final morning included a lecture from Dr Fiona Edmonds on cultural contacts in early medieval Britain and Ireland, followed by supervisions on Celtic History led by post-doctoral researchers in the ASNC Department. The Summer School ended with a session on university admissions, applying to Cambridge, and opportunities for studying medieval culture more widely, which was led by Dr Andrew Bell, an Anglo-Saxon historian who is also Admissions Tutor at Gonville & Caius College. The aim of the Summer School was to offer students a taste of life as an ASNC undergraduate at Cambridge: the disciplinary breadth of the Department is such that the students got an intensive, whistle-stop tour of medieval languages, literature, history and palaeography over the course of a few brief days, but they were unflagging in their enthusiasm, their ability and their dedication. We hope that the Summer School will inspire all the participants to go on to university and to further their interest in the medieval world.

ASNC Open Day

On 23rd June ASNC welcomed more than sixty potential applicants and their parents to our departmental Open Day, which was held in the English Faculty Building on West Road and in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College. Senior members of the ASNC Department gave short talks on the various papers available to our undergraduates, from Old Norse to Palaeography, Celtic Philology to Anglo-Saxon History. There were also talks on various aspects of the University's admissions process. After that, our visitors had the opportunity to see a number of Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh manuscripts at the Parker Library, including the Corpus Glossary (an early ninth-century manuscript containing a glossary in Latin and Old English, which provides some of the earliest evidence for the Old English language), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and a Latin copy of the medieval Welsh law texts known as Cyfraith Hywel.

CCCC MS 197B, an eighth-century gospelbook (image from http://parkerweb.stanford.edu)

In addition to our departmental Open Day, we also had a stand in the Law Faculty at the main University Open Days (on 1st and 2nd July), and over the course of those two days dozens more potential applicants dropped in to the Department to find out about what we do. We hope that many of the people who visited us over the course of the Open Days will be joining the Department as new undergraduates in October 2011.

Cath Cnucha: a twenty-first century adaptation

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting pupils from the City of London Academy – Islington and the Central Foundation Boys’ School who came to Corpus Christi College to find out about university life, and about applying to study at Cambridge. After a series of events and lunch organised by Corpus's Admissions Tutor, Dr Melanie Taylor, I had the opportunity to offer pupils a taster lecture, so that they could experience one of the more unusual subjects one can study at Cambridge, namely Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic.

Some of the wonderful pupils from the Central Foundation Boys' School

We discussed some ideas about 'translation', and how the act of translating an historical source can break down barriers, both linguistic and cultural, and shed new light on the past. But we also talked about the way one chooses to translate a text, and how that can open up the text to new audiences (both Ciaran Carson's translation of The Táin [Penguin: 2007] and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf [Faber & Faber: 2002] are good examples of this).

Creative talents from City of London Academy - Islington