Cambridge Connections

6 July – 2 August 2008
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Location: On-campus

Course Description

Research inevitably calls for detailed and accurate investigation, but the ability to place that investigation in context, to realise the power of connections and links, is invaluable to not only to scholars, but also to anyone who wishes to be effective in a leadership role. This Cambridge Connections programme is designed to foster the ability to think beyond an immediate and narrow field of interest. Participants will benefit immensely from the exchange of ideas both with lecturers and with their student peers from around the globe.

This four-week programme for up to 20 GSP students is comprised of the following elements:

• Two weekly seminar meetings of the GSP group (a total of eight across the GSP), focusing on interdisciplinarity
• Four papers, to be written on subjects informed by plenary lecture attendance (primarily, but not exclusively, Literature or History).
• Once-weekly Cambridge-style supervision sessions (one hour) for individuals or pairs of students, during which papers are discussed
• Two or three daily plenary lectures chosen from the range: International Summer School Term I:(interdisciplinary) Creation History: States and nations Literature: The line of beauty Science: Visions of the future: Newton to nanoscience Art History: The making of Art: line, colour and composition from Giotto to Rothko
• Research time in the University Library (a Copyright Library) and access to other faculty libraries

Plenary lectures are given by eminent scholars from a wide spectrum of specialist fields, and include question and answer sessions after each talk. Lecture topics range from the latest interpretation of historical events and works of literature to cutting-edge scientific discoveries. (The Global Study Programme also spans the first week of the Medieval Studies and Shakespeare programmes, so additional lectures on Superstition and belief (Medieval) and Shakespeare’s skills will be available in the final week of this programme.) For these plenary lectures, the GSP students will be in the company of participants in the International Summer Schools, affording the group a truly global experience.

Tapping in to the full range of subjects on offer will allow GSP students with widely differing fields of interest to attend this pilot programme, tailoring a programme to their own personal areas of interest, but also focusing on interdisciplinarity: making connections between writings, events, discoveries and disciplines.

The morning and evening plenary lecture programmes offer a range of over one hundred talks, covering a vast number of topics. Sample talks already agreed include the following:

• Creating peace in divided societies
• Can the Middle East learn from the experience of Northern Ireland?
• The future of cancer treatments
• What do animals know about other minds and other times?
• 360 million years BCE: environmental changes and the origin of tetrapods
• Europe in Victorian Britain
• The origins of nationalism
• Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty
• Proving crime: trial by battle at Winchester in 1249
• Contemporary explanations of the Black Death
• The Conversion of England to Christanity: Augustine to Bede
• A popular view of Copernicanism
• Creation and evolution
• Engineers and alchemists: the accidental makers of modern science

Applicants will be sent final details of speakers (and can access the programme lists as they develop on the web), and precise timings so that options can be selected in advance, and will be asked to indicate their preferred subject area(s). Selected candidates will be required to submit detailed proposals for the supervision field of study, so that supervisors can be allocated before the start of the programme.

Supervisions will normally be conducted by University/College lecturers who are also course directors on the International Summer Schools.

Weekly papers and supervisions ensure academic rigour. This programme format - a combination of self-directed research, lectures, discussions and supervisions - also largely mirrors the experience of regular Cambridge undergraduates, who in many subjects are not required to attend set ‘classes’, and can elect to hear particular lectures on topics within and beyond their immediate field of study, but who are required to attend supervisions and write papers. The four weeks of study will be very intensive. Assessment will be based on contributions to supervisions and on written papers. Oral feedback on papers will form part of the supervision, but students will also receive narrative reports on submitted papers.

Please note: the Cambridge system does not include ‘credit’: candidates who wish to receive credit from their home institution will be able to submit their own study timetable (some 50 contact hours of lectures, 8 hours of supervision and 12 hours of discussion, and therefore a total of some 70 contact hours over the four weeks, excluding additional research and self-directed study time), and percentage marks for papers, after the programme.

Course tuition fee: GBP 1495
Accommodation fee: GBP 1520 for four weeks, including bed, breakfast and evening meal

Website: www.cont-ed.cam.ac.uk/intsummer/iaru

Further enquiries: Sarah Ormrod, E-mail sjo1001@cam.ac.uk