The St. Clare's Seminar Series has provided an opportunity for students to explore a stimulating range of issues and ideas. Each semester the series is linked by a common theme. Themes in previous years have included: Death and Love; Dreams and Nightmares; Creation and Inspiration; Tragedy and Love.

Cultural Contests is this semester's theme. As the cultural historian Judith Walkowitz has observed, modern life is ‘a series of multiple and simultaneous cultural contests and exchanges across a wide social spectrum'. What are the key cultural disputes that have helped to shape the modern world? Christianity versus Paganism, Capitalism versus Communism, Art versus Life, Blur versus Oasis?

Seminar title	Speaker
Competing Narratives: Why Every Cultural Contest Tells a Story	Nick Kneale - St. Clare's, Oxford
Contested Cultures: The Greeks in Afghanistan	Dr. Llewelyn Morgan - Brasenose College & Oxford University Classics Department
Public versus Private in the Internet Age	Nicholas McInerney - Professional Scriptwriter
Rock Rivalries	Mike Smith - Managing Director of Columbia Music
"Divided by a Common Language?": British versus American English	Dr. David Grylls - Director of Literary Studies, Oxford University Department for Continuing Education
The Struggle between the Spirit and the Senses in the Nineteenth Century	Prof. Barrie Bullen - University of Reading
The Victorians and the Medieval Past: Interpretation versus Fantasy	Paul Sinclair - St. Clare's, Oxford
Great Expectations or Storm Clouds? Victorian Versions of Progress	Emeritus Prof. David Paroissien - University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Criminology versus the Gothic Imagination in the late Nineteenth Century	Dr. Roger Dalrymple - Buckinghamshire New University