APPLETON, WIS. — Henry Mayr-Harting, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History emeritus at Oxford University, discusses the renowned Oxford tutorial as part of Lawrence University’s year-long examination of individualized learning and tutorial education.
Mayr-Harting presents “The Oxford Tutorial” Thursday, November 9 at 11:10 a.m. in Lawrence’s Wriston Art Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
The tutorial system is at the heart of an Oxford education and is characterized by intellectual rigor designed to develop the habits of independent thought and rational argument. All Oxford undergraduates attend tutorials at least once a week. The tutorial system stresses personal relationship between teacher and student that will allow student to produce their best.
A Fellow of the British Academy, Mayr-Harting previously served as Reader in Medieval History and Fellow of St. Peter’s College before being named Regius Professor in 1997. The professorship is a Crown appointment and one of Oxford’s most distinguished positions. In taking up the appointment, Mayr-Harting became both the first non-Anglican and non-ordained Canon of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Lawrence in 1998.
Born in Prague, he studied at Merton College, Oxford, earning the doctor of philosophy degree and began his teaching career at the University of Liverpool in 1960. He has served as Fellow and Tutor of St. Peter’s College, the Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, a Visiting Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge and the Brown Foundation Fellow at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. He also serves as a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Mayr-Harting is the author of “The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England,” regarded as the most definitive and widely cited work on the subject; a two-volume book on Ottonian book illumination; and a historical account of the clergy members from 1075-1207 at the cathedral in the medieval town of Chichester. A contributor to the “Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity,” he co-edited, with Richard Harries, the book “Christianity: Two Thousand Years.”
