By Diane Swanbrow
News and Information Services
A new Program in British Studies has been established at the University.
The program, directed by history Prof. Michael P. MacDonald, will be supported by funds from the Office of International Academic Affairs and a gift from Sydney L. Mayer.
MacDonald is the author of Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England and, with Terence R. Murphy, of Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England, just re-issued in paperback by Oxford University Press. MacDonald currently is researching a book on the history of dreams in England, and a study of gender and power in the Jacobean court.
“The resources for studying Britain at Michigan are among the best in the nation,” MacDonald says. “We have one of the largest and most eminent contingents of historians, literary scholars and social scientists doing research and teaching about aspects of British history and its global ramifications. The University already attracts many of the best graduate students in the country to study the field here, and the undergraduate offerings on British themes are many and diverse.
“The Program in British Studies will supply an institutional framework for encouraging research and teaching in the field and provide an impetus to develop new ideas and new approaches to British subjects,” MacDonald adds. “It will sponsor faculty and student seminars to promote intellectual exchange across disciplines, coordinate relevant course offerings across departments, host special events and bring distinguished scholars from the U.S.A. and Britain to campus.”
The first visiting scholar is John H. Elliott, the Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, who will present inaugural lectures on “Britain and Spain in America.”
“Prof. Elliott will compare British and Spanish colonialism and their impact on native peoples from the time of Columbus until the independence movements in North and South America,” MacDonald notes. The free, public lectures are co-sponsored by the Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. All will be delivered at the Clements Library, 909 S. University.
The initial lecture, “Conquest and Settlement,” will be delivered at 8 p.m. Sept. 20. The second lecture, “Colonists and Colonized,” will take place Sept. 21 and the third, “Colonial States and Imperial States,” at 4 p.m. Sept. 22. A reception will follow each lecture, with a special exhibition of rare books, maps and manuscripts mounted at the Clements for the lecture themes.
