Fall 2025 London Program
Curriculum
In retrospect, 2000 was something like the peak of Cool Britannia, the culmination of political and social developments that refashioned multicultural London into a world capital of finance and culture. Nothing epitomized the moment more than the international prestige and success of its musicians, artists and sports stars. By 2024, that world seems completely upended. Brexit. COVID. Austerity politics and a degraded quality of life. Income disparities reasserting class and regional divides. Violent riots protesting the scale of immigration. “After Brexit,” the jointly taught course all students will enroll in this term, will seek to answer those questions through immersive experiences in contemporary culture across a range of media. What do British audiences today respond to? How are contemporary artists articulating what it means to live and create in the UK today? How are identities being figured? What issues are central, and how different does the cultural landscape seem from the US?
This course will also serve as a shared set of experiences that students will further process and reflect upon in the courses Professors Lopez and Pence will teach individually. Each student will choose either “Soundscape Mindfulness and Design: Composing with the Sounds of London” or “London Stage and Studio” as part of their semester. In different media, each uses the creative process as a vital way to create and convey personal meaning out of the richly immersive experiences of our deep dive into contemporary cultural life in London.
Students will also select a course taught by on-site faculty: “The London Stage” or “The History of London” serve as excellent complements to the other offerings, providing expert context to our explorations.
Faculty
Jeffrey Pence, English
More about Jeffrey Pence
Tom Lopez, TIMARA
I am very excited to teach “Soundscape Mindfulness and Design: Composing with the Sounds of London.” London will present us with a universe of sonic material to work with, from human language and music, to machinery and nature. I will offer students the tools and skills to collect, process, produce, and compose with the sounds that speak to them. There are obvious possibilities for use with dance, theater, film, podcasting, and so on. But I am particularly eager to see Oberlin students propose “outside-the-box” projects. Sonic postcards? Public installations? Guided audio tours? Pre-Paleozoic igneous tambula rocks? From my days as an Obie, and my years teaching here, I know that Oberlin students are incredibly imaginative, and often have wonderful talents adjacent to their primary discipline. I can’t wait to hear what they create.
More about Tom Lopez