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.

Gender and identity - "Gender", according to the World Health Organization, ‘refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women'. How have gender roles been constructed, challenged and reconfigured in various societies and eras? How does gender impact on identity as we move towards a technology-driven, trans-gendered age?

Seminar title	Speaker
Gender Trouble: the queering of modern identity	Nick Kneale - St. Clare's, Oxford
Barbie and Action Man: toys, bodies and genders	Professor Jonathan Bignell - University of Reading
Dressed to Kill: clothing and gender in the late nineteenth century	Professor Barrie Bullen - University of Reading
Imagined Interiors: depicting domestic space in Edwardian art	John Rolfe - St. Clare's, Oxford
"Not Quite Ladylike"? Women's Drinking and the English Public House, 1918-39	Dr Stella Moss - St. John's College, Oxford
The matrona / whore complex: being a liberated woman in Rome	Dr Llewelyn Morgan - Brasenose College, Oxford
Between the Earthly and the Ideal: visions of women in Italian literature	Francesca Magnabosco - St. Edmund Hall, Oxford
Intruders on the Rights of Men: public and private writing for women in the 18th and 19th centuries	Dr Emma Plaskitt - Stanford University
Fighting foes and finding selves: from medieval romance to modern horror	Dr Roger Dalrymple - Buckinghamshire New University