About the Author » My Oxford Year
The academic year 2009-10 gave me the biggest honor of my career: the Eastman Professorship to the University of Oxford. Selected jointly by The Rhodes Trust and Balliol College, Oxford, an American professor is selected annually for one of the highest honors Oxford gives. The professorship lasts for a year, and the recipient is given the lovely Eastman House to live in, in the middle of Oxford (complete with housekeeper and gardener), honorary fellowship at Balliol, and an honorary master's degree. The Eastman Professorship carries few delineated responsibilities, other than giving some lectures and being an active presence at the college and university. (I lectured in the English faculty, around the university, in London, and in Plymouth; spoke at post-graduate seminars; and led a tutorial.)
Most previous Eastman professors have been in the sciences and social sciences, and all but four have been men. Previous holders include Linus Pauling, Lionel Trilling, and Natalie Zemon Davis. Thus I am only the fifth woman, and the first person of color, to hold the professorship since it was established in 1930.
Anthony and I arrived on 14 September 2009 in style: we decided to travel on the Queen Mary 2. We sailed past the Statue of Liberty and six days later awoke to the early morning lights of Southampton. England was already a second home to us, since we've lived here several times in the past (in Devon and in London), and I am often in London and Exeter, but entering it by sea was an entirely new and far more civilized way to travel: a stateroom with a balcony, dressing for dinner, walks on the decks, making new friends in the restaurants, elegant and impeccable service. I'm not sure I'll ever want to get on a crowded and cramped plane again.
This has been one of the best years of my life. Not only did I spend my days and evenings walking amongst the spires and ancient stone of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but I became part of the intellectual life of Oxford and London. I lunched with faculty in the senior common room, we dined—in black tie—at formal dinners in Hall, and attended music nights; I went regularly to Evensong services at the colleges. Already familiar with some of England, we got to know other areas of Britain as well: the Lake District, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Wales, and the southwest. Intrepid New Englanders, we marveled at the British attitude toward snow (close everything down and wait until it melts), and shopped regularly in the Covered Market, even learning not to be startled by the boxes of rabbits at our feet, or decapitated deer and boar hanging from hooks outside the butcher shops.
I left home with more friends than we started with, and closer ties to those we already had. I wish to thank the following people at Oxford who made this year so successful: Andrew Graham, the Master of Balliol College; Judith Brown, Douglas Dupree, Jo Roadknight, and Nicola Trott, all of Balliol; Christopher Brown of the Ashmolean Museum, and Sally Brown; Hermione Lee, Warden of Wolfson College; Sally Mapstone, Head of the Faculty of English Language and Literature, and Hayley Morris, Faculty Administrator; Laura Marcus, Goldsmith's Professor of English; Nigel Bowles, Director of the Rothermere American Institute, and Laura Harvey, Academic Programme Coordinator; Donald Markwell, Warden of Rhodes House; and Christopher Fletcher, Head of Western Manuscripts, The Bodleian Library.