News
Lived history: from travel study to new Oxford-partnered Centre for Narrative Arts
Fall 2025 marked an extensive travel-study period for Graduate Liberal Studies (GLS) with students exploring Italian food and cultural history in Rome and then historical and contemporary writing at Oxford鈥檚 Centre for Life Writing (OCLW). Both hybrid field schools (with 6 weeks of online classes and 1 week abroad) are building blocks toward GLS鈥� planned Oxford-partnered Centre for Narrative Arts (CNA), which will feature extensive programming for students, alumni, and the broader community starting in Fall 2028 (subject to securing upper University approvals).
Leveraging some of the most popular aspects of recent GLS Italian travel study, the Fall 2025 program focused on the history, politics, economics, art-historical, religious, and environmental contexts of Italian food history and culture. The week abroad was rigorous as students participated in a wide variety of seminars, museum visits, historical walking tours, food tastings, and cooking workshops. The experience was enriched by the expertise of Italian partners such as food historian and restauranteur Guido Farinelli, film and cultural critic Carolina Ciampaglia, archaeologist Mariella Mastrogiocomo, and art historians and museum guides specifically chosen to bring the vivid history of Rome to life. As a result, students emerged with a deep understanding of Roman food and cultural history, heightened sense of the tensions between Italian tradition and modernity, and profound appreciation for the dinner plate as interdisciplinary nexus.
Testimonials
They say travel makes the world feel smaller, more familiar, while at the same time expanding your horizons. Rome was like that for me. Early on my first morning, as I sat at the foot of the statue of Giordano Bruno in the Piazza Campo de鈥� Fiori and watched the stall keepers set up their wares, I thought of my grandfather. A tall, handsome Northern-Italian emigrant affectionately known as 鈥淏ig Louie鈥� during early first years working the coke ovens in Michel, BC, he was intellectually (and culinarily) curious, much like Bruno. Despite few opportunities for formal learning, he pursued knowledge of the natural world, from botany to cosmology, and taught me how to see and translate wonder into words and art. As I observed, collected, and reflected on layers of knowledge about Italy through our readings and my on-the-ground observations, I noticed connections between food, ideas, relationships and spaces that broadened my understanding of the world and my place within it. This experience sparked my explorations in ways that evoke my grandfather鈥檚 spirit and will stay with me. 鈥�Melanie Monk
The appeal of the Rome GLS travel study is not just the destination, it is the community of learners that share an intense week of academic and self- discovery. By connecting with other intellectually curious adults around a central theme, the travel experience becomes more than a mere tourist visit, it becomes the basis for this curiosity to continue well after the travel study is over. This opportunity is ideal who are looking for a rich experience that is more about self than selfies, discourse instead of tourism. Even for those who may have "seen" Italy before, the unique experiences and perspectives that GLS travel study provides is well worth it. 鈥�Serena
I had high expectations of this travel study and they were well and truly exceeded. Rome, of course, is a wonder but it was the interesting, intelligent and engaged people who made this time so valuable鈥攎y fellow students, the Italian partners and the 51社区黑料team. I鈥檝e realized you can鈥檛 really understand history without being in the place and you can鈥檛 really understand a place without knowing its history. 鈥�Kate Smith
The Rome field school was followed closely by an immersive visit to the OCLW where students participated in faculty-led seminars and talks with leading figures in biography, autobiography, and beyond. During their intensive on-the-ground week in Oxford, students explored the many and varied ways lives have been represented across time, genre, and media through a combination of walking tours, site visits, lectures, and dedicated seminars with Oxford writers and academics. Their focus was twofold: the aesthetic and social thought generated by 19th- and 20th-century literary and artistic Oxford lives (particularly Ruskin, Pater, Wilde, Brittain, Naipaul, and Winterson); and the trends and techniques in contemporary life writing. This iteration of the travel study at Oxford, made possible through the generosity of Dr. Yosef Wosk and the Yosef Wosk Family Foundation, also inducted students into the University鈥檚 Bodleian Library, allowing them to research their final academic papers or research-based creative projects in one of Europe鈥檚 oldest libraries.
Testimonials
The Oxford travel-study turned out to be rather portal-like for me, appropriate perhaps to a place of Wonderlands and Narnia-bound wardrobes. Of course, marveling at Gothic architecture while immersing oneself in the complexities of Ruskin was moving and delightful and fraught. However, the alchemy extended beyond this 3D scholarship. The Oxford Centre for Life Writing legitimated my lifelong crush on the Humanities. From a deep dive into the Medical Humanities and its many offshoots to a confrontation with the fragile and indomitable I that forms and reforms in post-colonial texts and their predecessors, my experience at Oxford has shaped my thinking and help me figure out where I want my creative and scholarly work to go from here. I am very grateful. 鈥�Deborah Vieyra
The Oxford Field School experience has been transformative in ways I'm still working to unpack. It has expanded my horizons around what it means to be a student, as well as how I understand myself to be situated in history. To visit the birthplace of so many ideas was an incredible experience and the structure and support from both the 51社区黑料and Oxford organizations made it both comfortable and accessible. 鈥�Scott Gibson
Without exaggeration, the immersion into the Oxford experience has been the highlight of my life (other than my family). In all sincerity, there truly are no words to express my gratitude for this opportunity, and the support and care I received. The exposure to Oxford life, the various colleges, the professionals working there, the libraries, the cathedral, the landscape, the English rain, the pubs and restaurants, was simply transcendent. Eternal thanks to Dr Sasha Colby, Dr Yosef Wosk, Dr Kate Kennedy, DPhil candidate Charles Pidgeon, and the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing team, including former president of Wolfson College and Emeritus Professor Dame Hermione Lee. I鈥檓 forever changed. 鈥�Gerry McConkey
These two field schools are active steps in a road toward the inauguration of the CNA, a brand-new international research hub offering more scholarly opportunities for GLS students and alumni. The mandate of this OCLW partnership is to achieve research excellence and public engagement through the study of story in its many forms and the production of compelling, scholarship-based narratives that reach wider and more diverse audiences. The CNA will foster legible, research-based narratives that can travel outside academe, responding directly to public questioning of the value of the University in civic life and to threats posed by narratives based in misinformation. As the inauguration nears, GLS will consult with students and alumni in 2026 about the new centre鈥檚 formation and direction. The creation of the CNA heralds an exciting new chapter in GLS鈥� story at 51社区黑料and represents the growth and resilience of the program.