The Weidenfeld Visiting Chair of Comparative European Literature

The Weidenfeld Visiting Chair of Comparative European Literature brings a distinguished scholar to Oxford University.  The Weidenfeld Chair delivers six to eight one hour lectures and holds two seminars on a wide range of comparative literature. While at Oxford the lecturer is attached to St. Anne’s College as a temporary fellow. Some of the world’s leading writers and scholars of European literature have firmly established for this initiative at Oxford and it is much appreciated and widely attended by the public.

The current Visiting Chair is Professor Marjorie Perloff presented a series of lectures during the Trinity Term 2009 entitled Unoriginal Genius: Constraint, Concretism, Citation.

Previous Visiting Chairs of Comparative European Literature

2007 - 2008         Bernhard Schlink

Guilt about the past

2006 - 2007         Professor Wolf Lepenies

Culture and politics in Germany: A durable tension

2005 - 2006         Michèle Le Doeuff

The spirit of secularism: On fables, gender and ethics

2004 - 2005         Sander L. Gilman

Multiculturalism and the Jews

2003 - 2004         Dr Mario Vargas Llosa

The temptation of the impossible: Victor Hugo's Les Miserables

2002 - 2003         Robert Alter

The European city and the language of the novel

2002 - 2003         Nike Wagner

Love and death: Vienna, Wagner and find de siècle culture

2001 - 2002         Professor Umberto Eco

Translating and being translated

1999 - 2000         Roberto Calasso

Literature and the Gods

1998 - 1999         Amos Oz

The story begins: Studying the opening sections of masterpieces in literature

1996 - 1997         Gabriel Josipovici

On trust

1995 - 1996         Martha Nussbaum

Ascents of love: Desire and the good in the Western philosophical/literary tradition

1994 - 1995         George Steiner

Comparative literature: The songs of the Sirens