EXPLORE THIS COMPLEX, PARADOXICAL, AND FASCINATING ERA

Join us in August in a beautiful college in the heart of Oxford for lectures, special tours, and lively discussions focused on the history, literature, arts, and architecture of Victorian Britain.

The longest-reigning monarch (1837-1901) in British history, Queen Victoria gave her name to an age of extraordinary wealth, vitality, and self-confidence.  Along with dramatic expansion of prosperity, power, and culture, Victoria's England also experienced acute social change, intense intellectual controversy, and the remarkable expansion of the British Empire.  The great fullness of life in this, the world's first urban and industrialized society, led Ralph Waldo Emerson to observe of the English that "The modern world is theirs.  They have made and make it day by day."

Designed for instruction and delight, this program is perfect for anyone interested in the rich history, arts, and literature of England in the second half of the nineteenth century.  I hope you will join us as we explore the complex and paradoxical aspects of this second English Renaissance. 
                                                                Tom Dowd, Program Director

DURING A PROGRAM DESIGNED FOR INSTRUCTION AND DELIGHT, YOU WILL:

• Live in a beautiful college, dine in a delightful country pub, and enjoy experiencing the charms of Oxford.

 
• Visit and explore important Victorian sites in Oxford, London, and beyond, placing them, and their creators, in both historical and contemporary contexts.

 
• Attend thought-provoking lectures given by expert faculty discussing the history, literature, arts, and architecture of Victorian Britain.  Sessions will examine the novelists, poets, playwrights, artists, and architects that captured the spirit of the age.

• Examine the life and influence of William Morris (1834-96), the innovative Victorian designer, writer, and Pre-Raphaelite painter.  A special visit to Kelmscott Manor, Morris's evocative country home, will allow you to view an outstanding collection of his works, and enjoy the beautiful gardens that so inspired him. 

• Study the Victorian Age as it evolved through the 19th into the 20th Century, and how that development illustrates the timeless process of adaptation to changing circumstances.

• Consider history's unsettled assessment of the rhetoric and reality of the Victorian Age.

 
• Enjoy a play in a college garden, and much more...   Return to top

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PROGRAM FEATURES

This program is a lively mix of activities.  You will enjoy interactive sessions and small group discussions with a talented faculty and interesting fellow participants.  Traveling beyond the dreaming spires of Oxford, you will study and tour important Victorian sites in London and Gloucestershire.  We have also built free time into the schedule to allow you to explore the many attractions of Oxford and to relax in the beautiful College gardens and courtyards.  You will enjoy excellent food throughout the program as you dine in Trinity’s portrait-lined Hall for most meals, with the College silver in use for the special closing dinner.

Participants often comment on how much they enjoy feeling like residents, not tourists, during their week in Oxford.

Before the program begins, you will be sent an Oxford guidebook, specially selected program books and materials, directions, and comprehensive information that will make it very easy for you to get to, and enjoy your stay in, Oxford.

Join us and discover that, as a participant wrote, “Spending a week with an extraordinary faculty in a beautiful Oxford college studying a stimulating topic is a transcendent experience, and downright fun.” Return to top

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AMONG THE SITES WE WILL VISIT ARE

• VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM.  Delight in a visit to the V&A, at once the world's greatest museum of decorative arts, the National Museum of Art and Design, and one of the most imaginative museums in London.  The V&A's marvelous collection will surprise, inspire and inform you.  Housed in beautiful Victorian and Edwardian buildings near the site of the Great Exhibition's Crystal Palace, this vast box of delights has seven miles of galleries housing an amazing collection of artifacts. 

• THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER.  Savor a special visit to the Houses of Parliament, London’s finest Victorian Gothic Revival building.  Here you will enjoy an insider’s view of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the Speaker’s Chamber, and more.  Among the highlights will be a visit to Westminster Hall, one of the most magnificent medieval halls in all of Europe and scene of some of the most dramatic and important moments in English history. 

• UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.  Enjoy the stories told by the inventive and influential architecture of this splendid Victorian building.  Behind a Gothic exterior of variegated stone and elaborate carvings waits an open, airy interior of glass, decorative ironwork, and multi-colored pillars.  Here you will also see some of the earliest dinosaur skeletons, remnants of the Oxford Dodo immortalized in Alice in Wonderland, and the fascinating Pitt-Rivers ethnological museum.

• KEBLE COLLEGE, OXFORD.  See first-hand, in all its controversial glory, this dramatic example of High Victorian Gothic architecture.  William Butterfield, an important Victorian architect, combined brick, stone, and tile to make polychromatic decoration inside and out a defining visual feature of this redbrick Victorian wonder.  During our visit to the Keble College Chapel, you will also see the most popular of all Victorian paintings, Holman Hunt's original The Light of the World.

• THE OXFORD UNION. Explore this world famous debating society, where you'll have a close-up view of the relic of an important Victorian aesthetic movement.  It was here, in the summer of 1857, that seven young Pre-Raphaelite artists painted murals depicting scenes from Arthurian Legend on the walls and ceiling of the octagonal reading gallery.  This experience had a lasting impact on the careers of the artists involved.

• OTHER SITES WE WILL VISIT INCLUDE: William Morris's Kelmscott Manor, Exeter and Worcester Colleges in Oxford, a special surprise visit, and more.        Return to top

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

This program is perfect for anyone who enjoys travel and learning opportunities that provide intellectual stimulation in a welcoming and congenial environment.   Offering unsurpassed value, rich content, and a long history of exceptional participant satisfaction, this program will give you an insider’s view of the rich history, arts, and literature of England in the second half of the nineteenth century. Return to top

THE SETTING - TRINITY COLLEGE

Your home for the week is Trinity College , the most central of Oxford's colleges, where you will live, study, and dine.  Founded in 1555, Trinity is noted for the excellence of its architecture,  gardens, and food and its pleasant atmosphere for living and learning.  Among Trinity's "old boys" (women were first admitted in 1979) are Lord Baltimore, the Prime Ministers William Pitt and Lord North, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Lord Kenneth Clark. 

While "up at Oxford" both faculty and participants live "in college." Each person has a private single bedroom with a refrigerator and a sink with hot and cold taps.  Many feature an attached sitting room.  Bathrooms are shared. There are a limited number of double occupancy suites.  During your stay, the College beer cellar, squash court, and laundry facilities are available for your use. Return to top   Take an interactive photographic tour of Trinity College - Virtual Trinity

OXFORD, ENGLAND - CITY OF DREAMING SPIRES

Oxford, home to England's oldest University and smallest cathedral, is located on the north bank of the River Thames, fifty-six miles northwest of London.  Frequent bus connections to Heathrow and Gatwick airports and extensive bus and train connections to London make it very easy to travel to and from Oxford.   Return to top

THE PROGRAM FACULTY INCLUDES

Stephen Arata, Associate Professor, University of Virginia English Department and author of Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle and editor of William Morris's, News from Nowhere.

Justine Hopkins, Lecturer at Bristol University, University of Oxford, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Tate Museum and author of Michael Ayrton: A Biography and many articles on 19th- and 20th-century art.

PROGRAM DIRECTORS

Tom Dowd, Senior Director of Program Development, National and International Programs, University of Virginia School of Continuing and Professional Studies

Christopher Day, University Lecturer in Local History, Kellogg College, Oxford University Department for Continuing Education     Return to top

PROGRAM SCHEDULE 
(subject to change)

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15

10:00 am - Noon: Check-In 
12:30 pm: Lunch, Trinity Hall
1:45 pm: Session 1: Program Introduction & Orientation, Chris Day, Tom Dowd
3:00 pm: Session 2: An Overview of the Victorian Age, Steve Arata and Justine Hopkins
4:45 pm: Session 3: Tour Trinity College
6:00 pm: Free Time
7:00 pm: Opening Reception, President's Garden
7:30 pm: Opening Dinner, Trinity Hall

MONDAY, AUGUST 16

7:30 am: Breakfast, Trinity Hall
9:00 am: Session 4: The Way We Live Now: The Victorian Novel, Steve Arata
11:00 am: Session 5: Fact, Fable, and Fantasy: Painting the Victorian Age, Justine Hopkins
12:30 pm: Lunch, Trinity Hall
2:00 pm: Session 6: An Introduction to Victorian Oxford, Chris Day
3:30 pm: Session 7: Exploring Victorian Oxford - Part I, Chris Day, Justine Hopkins
5:30 pm: Afternoon Tea/Free Time
7:00 pm: Dinner, Trinity Hall                                           Return to top

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17

7:00 am: Breakfast, Trinity Hall
10:00 am: Session 8: Exploring Victorian London - Part I, Houses of Parliament, Palace of Westminster
1:00 pm: Lunch, Hugo's, South Kensington
2:30 pm: Session 9: Exploring Victorian London - Part II, Victoria and Albert Museum, Albertopolis
7:30 pm: Dinner, Crown and Horns pub, East Ilsley

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18

7:30 am: Breakfast, Trinity Hall
9:00 am: Session 10: Back to the Future: Victorian Architecture and the Gothic Revival, Justine Hopkins
11:00 am: Session 11: Poets, Playwrights, and Pundits: Victorian Poetry and Theatre, Steve Arata
12:30 pm: Lunch, Trinity Hall
2:00 pm: Session 12: Exploring Victorian Oxford - Part II, Chris Day, Justine Hopkins
5:00 pm: Free Time
6:00 pm: Dinner, Trinity Hall
7:00 pm: A Play in a College Garden                              Return to top

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19

7:30 am: Breakfast, Trinity Hall
9:00 am: Session 13: Terrible and Traditional Muses: Art and Science in Victorian England, Justine Hopkins
10:30 am: Session 14: William Morris: Victorian Artist, Writer, and Socialist, Steve Arata, Justine Hopkins
1:00 pm: Lunch at Kelmscott Manor
2:00 pm: Session 15: Exploring William Morris's Kelmscott Manor
7:00 pm: Dinner

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20

7:30 am: Breakfast, Trinity Hall
9:00 am: Session 16: Victorian Music, TBA
11:00 am: Session 17: Recessional: Leaving the Victorian Age, Steve Arata, Justine Hopkins
12:30 pm: Lunch, Trinity Hall
2:00 pm: Free Afternoon/Optional Tours (TBA)
7:00 pm: Closing Reception, Trinity Garden
7:30 pm: Closing Dinner, Trinity Hall                                Return to top

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21

8:00 am: Breakfast 
Enjoy a leisurely morning.  Check out time is 10:00 am.        Return to top

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travelandlearn@virginia.edu or call us at 800-346-3882 or 1-434-982-5252.