Greetings from Oriel College at Oxford University!

It’s hard to believe that two weeks have passed since the sociology students arrived at Oxford. Time passes quickly on the Thames.

We’re having a lovely time. Our host college, Oriel, is centrally located and within walking distance of many museums, theaters , and gardens. Both students and faculty have taken full advantage of this. We’ve also taken advantage of our close proximity to London and have taken several trips into the city. Our first trip was to Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx. What an adventure! After two hours on a bus, one hour on the tube, a long walk up a steep hill and through a city park, we finally reached the cemetery and found Marx’s grave. The students were so thrilled that they fell to the ground and spelled out a word using their bodies. Can you read it?

The following week the political science students let us tag along with them to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum in London. Amazing! Then we all enjoyed Shakepeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe Theater, a 16th-century open-air theater. Many sociology students also went along with the biology students on their day trip to the coast of Wales. They had a grand time!

Oh, by the way, classes are going swimmingly. Both courses have a global focus: the Social Inequality class focuses on the linked histories of west and non-west global nations, examining ways that inequalities become institutionalized (with primary focus on labor, health, and energy), and the Race class focuses on how the colonial past and current conceptions and use of race shapes economic relations between first and third world nations. Students are prepared and engaged (though they are presently panicked as there is a midterm in the morning).