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; The Sense of Place; Representing Childhood; The City and Modern Life; Boundaries and Borders;Culture and Power.

This semester the Seminar Series is focussed on 'The 1960s and Pop Culture'. The 1960s are often conceived of as a time of great social, political and cultural change. As John Lennon remarked (in his last ever interview), ‘The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility'. What were these possibilities and responsibilities? Were any of these promises fulfilled, or is the legacy of the sixties merely a nostalgic myth? This interdisciplinary series will explore these questions from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives.

Seminar title	Speaker
Cinema and the 1960s	Keith Hopper - Kellogg College, University of Oxford
How ‘Pop' was Pop Art?	David Chaplin - St. Clare's, Oxford
Bret Easton Ellis, the 1960s, and Youth Culture	Alison Lutton - St. Hugh's College, University of Oxford
High Culture in America: The Other Side of the Sixties	Karen Heath - St. Anne's College, University of Oxford
Silent Spring and the Summer of Love: Green Shoots of the Sixties	Alasdair Clayre - St. Clare's, Oxford
The Rise of Pop Psychology	Niamh Moriarty - PPC Worldwide, Oxford
John Lennon's Jukebox: Soul, The Beatles and the Transformation of Popular Music in 1960s Britain	Paul Sinclair - St. Clare's, Oxford
Psychedelia, Psychoticism and Psychopharmacology: Psychology in the 60s	Anna Scarna - Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford
The Mona Lisa of Popular Culture: The Beatles and the Making of the Sgt. Pepper Album Cover	John Rolfe - St. Clare's, Oxford