Education as a Rite of Privilege

FAIN: FT-58268-10

Albert Pionke
University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0001)

The first chapter of my in-process second book, "Education as a Rite of Privilege" will investigate the process of pre-professionalization, and particularly the ample practice in ritual, provided to undergraduates at Victorian Oxbridge. In this chapter, I plan to analyze nineteenth-century materials from the Oxford University Archives, currently held in Duke Humphrey's Library, the oldest reading room in Oxford's Bodleian Library, for what they reveal about Victorian Oxford's ritual culture, and to use these Archival records to provide necessary historical context for readings of several mid-century novels, including John Henry Newman's "Loss and Gain" (1848), William Makepeace Thackeray's "Pendennis" (1848-50), Cuthbert Bede's "The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green" (1853-57), and Thomas Hughes's "Tom Brown at Oxford" (1861). Receipt of a NEH Summer Stipend would allow me fund a research trip to Oxford University in the summer of 2010.