English Language & Literature

Studying at Mansfield

Eight new undergraduates join us each year.
We have five English Language and Literature Fellows and lecturers.
Explore the richness, range and colour of literature and language in every period, style and genre.
Take leading roles in a range of literary, media and arts projects.

English studies at Mansfield provide students with opportunities to explore the richness, range and colour of literature and language in its every period, genre and style. The students we take each year in English contribute to the Mansfield environment by engaging in the intellectual, creative and cultural life of the College and University.

They work towards success in their termly studies and in examinations, of course. But they also do much more. They make plays and performances, and lead student societies in literature and the arts. They write and edit student newspapers and magazines. They run arts festivals.

At Mansfield, we foster imaginative, disciplined thinkers from all walks of life. We achieve this by giving our students the tools to analyse the world critically and bring about positive change within it.

Tomi Ajinomoh, Mansfield English student

Your English Language and Literature tutors

Lucinda Rumsey

Supernumerary Fellow in English and Senior Tutor

Photo of Ros with her hands crossed and rested on her lap and bookshelves in the background

Professor Ros Ballaster

Vice-Principal; Professorial Fellow in English; LGBTQ Tutor

Professor Michèle Mendelssohn

Tutorial Fellow in English

Contact

michele.mendelssohn@mansfield.ox.ac.uk

Professor Michèle Mendelssohn

Tutorial Fellow in English

Michèle Mendelssohn is Professor of English and American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. She co-convenes the MSt in Victorian Literature. Her research ranges from late 19th century to the present day, and ranges across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (including American, African American, British and Canadian literatures)

Research interests

Michèle Mendelssohn is Professor of English and American Literature and Tutorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. She co-convenes the MSt in Victorian Literature. Her research ranges from late 19th century to the present day, and ranges across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (including American, African American, British and Canadian literatures). She has written, edited and introduced 7 books: Making Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture; Late Victorian into Modern, 1880-1920; Writing Under the Influence: Essays on Alan Hollinghurst; Why Friendship Matters; No Place Like Home (forthcoming in 2022); Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales (forthcoming in 2022). Her recent biography of Oscar Wilde was a semi-finalist for the PEN America Biography Prize, a finalist for the Biographers’ Club Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize and a finalist for the LGBTQ Polari Prize. It was selected as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Times Literary Supplement and The Advocate. The audiobook is available here.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The American Scholar and The Mail on Sunday as well as in peer-reviewed journals including African American Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, Nineteenth Century Literature, and the Journal of American Studies. Her next book project, The Ice Breaker, chronicles an early 20th century woman-led expedition to the Arctic. The book was inspired by a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship she held at the Pitt Rivers Museum in 2020-2021.

She has co-curated an exhibition, event series and interactive website called Making History: Christian Cole, Alain Locke and Oscar Wilde at Oxford. It showcases the shared history of Oxford’s trailblazing Black and Queer undergraduates through archives and personal testimony spanning the 19th c. to the present day. In this short video, she and University College Librarian Elizabeth Adams introduce the exhibition, discuss their inspiration for it and explain why its themes are still relevant. The project was shortlisted for the Vice-Chancellor’s Diversity Award.

Period/ Subject: Late 19th & Early 20th Century British and American Literature Research and Teaching Interests:

Late 19th and early 20th century British and American literature
Transatlantic studies
International Decadence
Visual and material culture
“Race” studies
Gender and sexuality studies

Dr Chris Salamone

Supernumerary Fellow in English and Tutor for Graduates

Dr Mark Atherton

Lecturer in English

Contact

mark.atherton@regents.ox.ac.uk

Dr Mark Atherton

Lecturer in English

Dr Mark Atherton teaches the English language at Mansfield College, and medieval English literature at Regent's Park College; he also lectures regularly on Old English in the English Faculty.

His present research is on the ‘making of England’ in the tenth century: literature and politics and questions of national and cultural identity, the history of Old English and Anglo-Latin literature. This is the subject of The Making of England: A New History of the Anglo-Saxon World (London: Bloomsbury), now available in paperback, and the monograph The Battle of Maldon: War and Peace in Tenth-Century England, which takes new approaches to the poem and other accounts of the battle, explores themes of religious typology, lordship and the rise of the ‘thegnly’ class, and assesses the people and places that fill the background to this classic work.

A completely revised edition of Mark's Complete Old English is available (Hodder and Stoughton, 2019) with new texts, including extracts from Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon. This book, in the Teach Yourself series, has already appealed to a wide readership: it is aimed at students without other experience of learning a language; it presents Old English passages in the context of their time, teaching vocabulary and grammar as it arises in the texts. The connections with modern English are made explicit; an audio recording of the passages eases the learning process.

Mark's book There and Back Again: J.R.R.Tolkien and the Origins of The Hobbit (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012/2014) covers the literary and linguistic interests of J.R.R. Tolkien and their influence on his fictional writings; he has also contributed a chapter ‘Tolkien and Old English’ to A Tolkien Companion, ed. Stuart Lee.

Mark's earlier research covered the following topics: Henry Sweet’s approaches to language description, the influence of his Anglo-Saxon Reader on twentieth-century poets such as Ezra Pound, anthropology and philology in late nineteenth century, the teaching of modern languages in Victorian England.

Articles & book chapters

Complete Old English, Teach Yourself Series (Hodder, 2019).
The Battle of Maldon War and Peace in Tenth-Century England, 2020, Atherton, M, I. B. Tauris.
‘“The Whale Road”: A Musical Response to the World of Beowulf’, Atherton, M, in Beowulf in Contemporary Culture, Edited by: Clark, D, 1 February 2020, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.1 – 345.
The Making of England: A New History of the Anglo-Saxon World, Atherton, M, 30 January 2017, Tauris Academic Studies.

Rachel O'Nunain

Stipendiary Lecturer in English and Academic Support Tutor

We’re here to help you grow and reach your full potential. At Mansfield we recognise it’s our responsibility to help our students navigate their courses. We’ll support you to make good decisions about the options you select from, among the classes and lectures delivered centrally by the English Faculty.

Our tutors have been at the forefront in developing widening access and the English curriculum in the College and University.

Lucinda Rumsey, tutor in medieval literature, has been Director of Admissions for the English Faculty, is a Fellow and Senior Tutor at Mansfield, and was awarded a 2019 MBE for services to social mobility in Higher Education. Professor Ros Ballaster has also served as Director of Admissions for Mansfield and as 2016-2021 Chair of the English Faculty. Professor Michèle Mendelssohn has been Deputy Director of the Rothermere American Institute. She curated Making History: Christian Cole, Alain Locke and Oscar Wilde at Oxford, an exhibition and website showcasing the university’s trailblazing Black and queer undergraduates.

How to apply

We welcome students of Baccalaureate or A-level in any combination of subjects, as long as they include English literature.

All candidates take the English Literature Aptitude Test (ELAT and submit one example of written work – preferably a piece of analysis or criticism based on their own research or thinking which has formed part of their studies in English.

Candidates called for interview will be given two interviews by tutors in English at Mansfield College – we aim to provide a supportive interview environment so you can show us your true potential and ability.

We’re looking for students who are enthusiastic, who enjoy reading and thinking about what they read, and who are prepared to work hard.

University of Oxford English Language & Literature page Faculty of English Language & Literature

How to Apply

Teaching and learning

We aim to open up institutions of privilege to those with enquiring minds and fewer social and economic advantages. What we teach and the ways that we do so is central to this process.

We pride ourselves on our teaching and our attention to your individual talents and interests.
The syllabus – designed to provide opportunities for the exploration of literary texts in English from every period – is both exciting and challenging.

In our College teaching, we’ll introduce you to a broad range of literary texts – ranging from Hamlet to the Harlem Renaissance, via Beowulf, Clarissa and Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative. We ask our students to question and challenge the terms on which works are designated as part of a literary ‘canon’, and to look at writing in English from across the globe.

You’ll think deeply about the historical and cultural contexts that shape the texts you study. You’ll learn to grapple with key issues in contemporary literary criticism and theory – from new directions in digital humanities to critical race studies and gender theory.

Projects and prizes

Life after Mansfield

From high academic achievement to creative talents in social media and communications, the skills our students learn and develop here enrich their lives and lead them to success in a huge variety of fields.

We have doctors, accountants, social workers, lobbyists, and politicians among our distinguished alumni, as well as many who work in professions more traditionally associated with our subject, such as the media and the arts.

Useful resources for students

Find out more

Our Access and Outreach team have put together a range of resources to help you get to know Mansfield, your subject, and your potential Oxford application.

Mansfield Isolation Conversations

Our English Literature tutors have contributed a range of articles to Mansfield’s Isolation Conversations – from Medieval anchoresses to Oscar Wilde’s experience in prison.

Isolation Conversations

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Studying at Mansfield