Welcome and Mission Statement

The minor in British and Commonwealth Studies is an interdisciplinary program sponsored by the Departments of English and History. It seeks to meet two needs that are frequently expressed at USU and, indeed, throughout higher education: the need for greater interdisciplinary experience, and the need for increased international studies. The purpose of the British and Commonwealth Studies minor is to broaden the experience of undergraduates in both of these key respects.

Through this minor, students will gain a fuller sense of the internal cultural complexity of the British Isles and of British culture’s interaction with other cultures around the globe. Britain’s experiences provide an important counterpoint to the concern in the United States today about issues surrounding cultural diversity. By studying the British and Commonwealth experience, students learn to understand more fully the significance of their own immediate experience. Finally, by asking students to consider the relationship between history and literature, the program develops their capacity to draw upon more than a single disciplinary perspective.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Dr. Nicole Aljoe
Assistant Professor of English, University of Utah

Slavery and the Anglophone Caribbean Literary Imagination

Although recent research by historians and sociologists has highlighted the global nature and effects of plantation slavery, discussions of the literary responses to slavery tend to focus on the United States. This talk will reveal the compelling relationships between several slave narratives from the British West Indian slave colonies and contemporary West Indian or Anglophone Caribbean literature.

RECENT EVENTS

Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 4:30 p.m.
Lecture: Professor Patrick Brantlinger, "Rudyard Kipling's 'The White Man's Burden' and its Afterlives"
Alumni House

Professor Brantlinger, the Rudy Professor of English at Indiana University, discussed the legacy of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" in imperial rhetoric and in British and American culture throughout the twentieth century and to the present day.

On Thursday, March 23, 2006, Dr. Robert Cole, Professor of History at USU, presented a talk titled "The War of Words Over Irish Neutrality in the Second World War: Setting the Stage."

On Wednesday, November 5, 2003, Dr. Alan Johnson of Idaho State University gave a talk entitled "The Jungle and the Garden."

On Thursday, November 13, 2003, Editor Terry Gifford gave an audio-visual presentation on her grandmother's letters from Afghanistan.

On Friday, February 21, 2003, Professor Bishnu Ghosh of UC Davis presented a talk entitled "Consuming Passions: Tracking Circulation of India's Bandit Queen."

On November 1, 2002, Professor Robert Mueller, a USU Extension faculty member in History, presented a public lecture and slide presentation based on his forthcoming book on Mary, Queen of Scots. The talk was entitled "Mary, Queen of Scots: From Pawn to Prisoner."

Professor Mueller's lecture was followed by a Tea Party, to which all students interested in the BCS minor were especially invited. This occasion provided everyone an opportunity to talk with the speaker, and it gave interested students a chance to discuss the program with current students and faculty.