News, Blogs & Upcoming Events

The Rothermere American Institute is delighted to announce that James P. Rubin, the distinguished diplomat and journalist, is to join the Institute as scholar in residence during the 2013-14 academic year. Mr Rubin will become a Research Fellow of the RAI.

Mr. Rubin (Jamie) was assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs under President Clinton, Chief Spokesman for the State Department between 1997 and 2000, and a top policy adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He has since held numerous senior positions in the international media, including at Sky News and Bloomberg, and is a regular contributor on politics and international affairs on television and in the press. He has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the London School of Economics.

Fresh from its Off-Broadway run in New York City, ‘Southern Discomfort’ comes to Oxford for one night only to play in the Rothermere American Institute’s Princess Margaret Memorial Garden on Friday 5th July at 6pm.

On 24 and 25 June, the RAI will be hosting a joint conference with Yale University on "Transnational Futures of Indigenous History", featuring a keynote address by Professor Coll Thrush. The conference is being convened by Pekka Hämäläinen, Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford University, and Ned Blackhawk, Professor of American History & American Studies, Yale University.

Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Associate Visiting Research Fellow at the RAI and Associate Professor of History at Siena College, will speak on ‘Boston on the Bosphorus: Freedom of Religion and Anglo-American Politics in 19th Century Istanbul’ at the RAI on Tuesday 4th June at 5pm. ‘Boston on the Bosphorus’ captures the religious, cultural, and political ingredients that combined to shape a missionary-imperial dynamic in nineteenth-century Istanbul.

7th Week Events (3-7 June)

The RAI congratulates Steve Tuffnell, who has this year held an fourth-year studentship in American history at the Insititute, on being awarded a prestigious British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Tuffnell completed his doctorate, ‘Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism and Empire in Britain’s American Expatriate Community, c.1830–1914’, in March 2013 and will remain in Oxford for his postdoctoral project, entitled ‘The American Invasion of the British World, 1865-1914’.

6th Week Events (27-31 May)

Maria Fanis and Barbara Reeves-Ellington, two of the RAI’s 2012-13 visiting fellows are both delivering talks on their research at the RAI in the next two weeks. On Friday 24th May at 5pm, Professor Fanis will speak on ‘Religion and Race in America’s Foreign Policy: How American National Identity Shapes America’s Actions Abroad’; on Tuesday 4th June at 5pm, Professor Reeves-Ellington will speak on ‘Boston on the Bosphorus: Freedom of Religion and Anglo-American Politics in 19th Century Istanbul’.

On Wednesday 22 May, the RAI will be delighted to welcome David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director, to give the 2013 Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters on "Theater in the Age of Twitter". The recipient of a Tony Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Auburn’s work treats many themes – loss, creativity, politics, history, and the bonds between parents and children.

5th Week Events (20-24 May)