First Impressions
The Rothermere American Institute is going to be a great place to work for the next couple of months. The centerpiece of the RAI is the Vere Harmsworth Library, which has a growing collection of useful materials on the United States. The building itself, dedicated by Bill Clinton in May 2001, is a gleaming, glass-encased edifice that does not fit my conception of Oxford University. But Oxford is actually something of an architectural mishmash, with plenty of new buildings erected next to the centuries-old ones. The RAI fits into its immediate environs in any case, as the much larger chemistry building next door is similarly modern in its form and function. The people here have generally been great and helpful and supportive. Most fellows come in during the regular year, so I get the sense that I am a bit of an anomaly, and they are going to great lengths to facilitate my presence.
It took a couple of days to get me straightened out with regard to my computer and all that, but today I am off and running. I wrote a book review and am getting squared away to spend serious work on a manuscript on civil rights. I do not mean to be oblique about this project, but much like the Freedom Ride dissertation-turned-manuscript, this one has a senior historian working on the topic. In this case, however, this particular senior historian has shown a tendency to make people’s lives miserable (I’m pretty certain he nailed me once already in an anonymous, but ruthless, way), especially wee junior ones like myself. If that is going to happen, I’d as soon have it come after I have a book contract, not before. In any case, I hope to get into a rhythm pretty soon, as in, tomorrow. My goal is to have a completed manuscript by the end of the summer.
The city itself is big in a sprawled out, that might be a long way to walk, kind of way. Each evening I will go out and try to walk and find a place to eat dinner and read and then find a coffee shop or bookstore or what have you. Oh, and I recall that there is something called “pubs” here in England as well.
One thing I do not expect to see or here is a lot of anti-Americanism. It has long been my experience that some Americans like to overstate how much the rest of the world hates us. I think that elides the real issue, which is that many people have no difficulty liking Americans but taking issue with American policy. I am sure that such criticisms will be even more prominent at Oxford. That said, there are so damned many Americans here (which, selfishly and a bit hypocritically, I always hate when I spend a significant amount of time abroad) that it would be hard to take seriously that Oxfordians are anti-American.