Masters and Servants in Literature and Film

A six-week evening course reading eighteenth-century servant writing alongside modern films about domestic service, taught by Robert Stearn.

This six-week course explores the cultural history of domestic service through eighteenth-century texts by and about servants, from Defoe's Roxana to Wollstonecraft's Maria, paired each week with a modern film such as Roma, The Servant and Parasite. Sessions combine a short lecture with seminar discussion, close reading and short writing tasks, with preparation tasks and a full reading list supplied by the tutor. The course is open to anyone interested in servant writing, working-class literature or eighteenth-century history.