Seminar Series on 'Keywords'

This series of public talks took inspiration from Raymond Williams’s influential book Keywords to examine the terms and concepts that act as touchstones for contemporary society. Williams described a keyword as one for which “the problems of its meanings seem inextricably bound up with the problems it is being used to discuss”. Defining such words, therefore, becomes part of the process of debating and contesting the values they represent.

With speakers spanning philosophy, political science, lexicography and literature, the series explored how Williams’s project remains vital today, and what words, and the struggles around them, continue to define society and culture in the twenty-first century. The first talk was recorded, with the permission of the speaker.

Equality

Speaker: Teresa Bejan
Date: 27 January 2022

Teresa Bejan opened the series with a discussion of equality, tracing how the term has evolved in modern political thought and how competing understandings of equality continue to structure debates about democracy, fairness and recognition.

Watch the recording via YouTube

Privilege

Speaker: Tony Crowley
Date: 10 February 2022

Tony Crowley examined the concept of privilege from its historical roots in law and class to its contemporary usage in public debate. The talk considered how the term has shifted from describing legal and economic advantage to denoting social and cultural inequalities.

Education

Speaker: Tim Blackman
Date: 24 February 2022

Tim Blackman (then Vice-Chancellor of the OU) explored the idea of education as a public good and a democratic right. The talk reflected on current tensions between market models of higher education and its civic purposes, asking what a genuinely inclusive university might look like today.

Word of the Year (WOTY)

Speaker: Fiona McPherson
Date: 31 March 2022

Fiona McPherson, Senior Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, discussed the process of selecting the Word of the Year and what it reveals about cultural preoccupations and linguistic change. The talk reflected on the interplay between public discourse and lexicographical record.

Literature

Speaker: Kate Pullinger
Date: 7 April 2022

Writer Kate Pullinger reflected on how the meaning of literature has evolved in a digital age. She explored questions of authorship, readership and technology, and considered how the rise of digital storytelling challenges traditional boundaries of literary form.

Peasant

Speaker: Lara Choksey
Date: 5 May 2022

Lara Choksey explored the word peasant and its entanglement with histories of colonialism, modernisation and class. The talk examined how the figure of the peasant continues to signify both marginality and resistance within global political imaginaries.

Rupture

Speaker: Sarah Marie Hall
Date: 26 May 2022

Sarah Marie Hall discussed the term rupture as a lens for understanding social, economic and emotional change. Drawing on feminist and ethnographic work, she examined how personal and collective ruptures reveal the fragility of everyday life in times of crisis.