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Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge: Ancient World and Classics Essay Competition 2024

• March 1, 2024 6:00 pm
• Categories: Competition , Schools , Student , Teachers

This essay competition is for students in their penultimate year of education – Year 12 (Eng + Wales), S5 (Scotland), Y13 (NI) or equivalent overseas. International applicants are welcome but the essay must be written in English.

See here for further details and how to enter.

Deadline for entries: 1 March 2024

Join us in historic St Andrews, next 11-13 July 2025, for our annual CA Conference.

Everyone is welcome and you can now submit your proposals for the panels, papers and workshops that will fill the weekend!

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Fitzwilliam College Year 12 Essay Competitions

• Calls for Papers
• External events

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, is delighted to announce its 2022 essay competitions, aimed at providing students in their penultimate year of education (Year 12 in England and Wales, S5 in Scotland, Year 13 in Northern Ireland) with an opportunity to engage with their interests beyond the classroom.

This year there will be competitions in Ancient World & Classics, Archaeology, History, Land Economy, and Medieval World, with a range of questions in each category.

The prize fund (per competition) is £300 with a first prize of £200 and highly commended applicants being awarded a £25 book voucher, awarded at a prize-giving ceremony in the Summer.

The deadline for all competitions is 6pm on Tuesday 1st March 2022, and there is a word limit of 2,500 words .

Further information and questions for each category can be found on the website:  https://www.fitz.cam.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate-admissions/opportunities-prospective-applicants/essay-competitions.

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Fitzwilliam College Essay Competition

Competition Overview

Students who are in grade 11, march 1, 2024 at 6pm, competition details.

1. Eligibility This competition is open for students in their penultimate year of education, including Year 12 in England and Wales, S5 in Scotland, and Year 13 in Northern Ireland (which is Grade 11 in the United States educational system). Students from any country can participate, but submissions are written in English.

2. Competition Categories Ancient World and Classics, Archaeology, Economics, History, Land Economy, Medieval World and Slavonic Studies.

3. Writing Webinars The competition also hosts two essay writing webinars to guide students throughout the competition: 

• Webinar 1 – Initial Preparation – 12th January 2024 at 6 pm
• Webinar 2 – Finalising your Essay – 16th February 2024 at 2pm
• Student Awards

Submission Details

Submission Deadline: March 1, 2024

1. Word Limit 2500 words for Archaeology, Classics & Ancient World, History, Land Economy, Slavonic Studies, and Medieval World; 1500 words for Economics; 500 words for the Architecture narrative.

2. Submission Guidelines Submissions should strictly adhere to the word limit set out in the subject brief above and contain a bibliography at the end. The word count excludes the bibliography but includes any footnotes. Each page should be numbered and contain the applicant’s full name.

3. Submission Limit Students are allowed to enter one competition and may only submit one entry to that competition. 

1. Ancient World and Classics

• What qualities made heroes heroic in ancient literature? Discuss with reference to any text or texts of your choice.
• How can the study of dead languages help us to understand ancient societies? Answer with reference to any period and region of your choice.
• “Imagery is the most important source for studying women in the ancient world.” Do you agree? Discuss with reference to any period and region of your choice.
• “The study of art and/or archaeology reveals people the texts ignore.” Discuss with reference to any people, period and region of your choice.
• What led to either a) the development of Athenian democracy or b) the fall of the Roman Late Republic?
• “Ancient philosophy is not relevant to modern political or ethical debates.” Do you agree? Discuss with reference to any text or texts and any political and/or ethical debates of your choice.

2. Archaeology

• To what extent can the archaeology of the environment prepare us for the era of ‘global boiling’?
• ‘Archaeology only deals with interpretations, never facts’. Discuss.
• To what degree is modern fiction and poetry more effective than archaeology in telling stories about the past?

3. Economics

• “The main claim of microeconomic theory is that markets are beneficial institutions.” Discuss.
• High and stable economic growth, as measured by an annual percentage change in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has long been targeted as a primary objective of governments’ economic policies across the globe. Is GDP growth an adequate measure of a country’s prosperity, a nation’s well-being and an appropriate policy objective? Discuss

Fitzwilliam College traces its origins to 1869, when the University of Cambridge launched an initiative to facilitate access to Higher Education for the many students who could not afford the costs of college membership. The initiative was part of the broader transformation of education in Britain, as the changes wrought by industrialisation and urbanisation created a need to cater for a growing, increasingly diverse and literate population. Earlier decades had already witnessed the establishment of King’s College London, Durham University, and the University of London, for instance, and colleges for women were beginning to open in Cambridge and Oxford. These radical social and economic changes were themselves connected to the intensification of globalisation in the second half of the nineteenth century, which placed Britain at the heart of an ever-tighter web of economic relations between the world’s continents. 

But the same year also witnessed the birth of Mohandas – later Mahatma – Gandhi, who would come to challenge Britain’s colonial rule and lead India on the path to independence; the death of Alphonse de Lamartine, the poet and politician who had proudly proclaimed France’s Second Republic in 1848, but whose final years were lived under the more authoritarian Second Empire; the marriage of Emperor Meiji, which consolidated Japan’s monarchy as the country began a new process of industrialisation; and the establishment by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the National Woman Suffrage Association in a United States still recovering from the Civil War. 

In 1869, as throughout history, old and new worlds collided. We invite applicants to examine, in their essays, a topic of their choice, connected to the changes taking place in or around the year 1869. Essays may focus on a particular event, a person, a political movement, or even a process of social, economic or cultural change, but they should consider the interaction of ‘old’ and ‘new’ forces which the chosen topic illuminates. 

5. Land Economy

• When it comes to decarbonizing the economy, “it’s not terribly difficult to know what needs to be done, though it is of course immensely difficult to get the relevant actors (government and others) to do it” (Barry, 1999). Discuss this statement, preferably drawing on evidence from the UK.
• The current Conservative government led by Rishi Sunak has unexpectedly decided to scrap part of the HS2 project. Irrespective of your overall political views towards the current government, do you think this was a sound decision from an economic point of view?
• Some claim that modern communication platforms, such as Zoom, and the work-from-home revolution will lead to a decline of inner cities. Do you agree?

6. Rosemary Horrox Medieval World

• “A World lit only by fire” – is this a fair characterisation of the thousand years of history between AD 500 and AD 1500?
• Is European Medieval history a study of white men?
• Are peasants more interesting than kings (answer with reference to the history of any part of the world in the middle ages)?
• Was High Medieval Europe (c.1100-1300) essentially going through the same experience as Kamakura period Japan (1185-1333)?
• Did the Hundred Years’ War create England and France as nation-states?
• To what extent was English imperialism the main cause of political change in medieval Britain and Ireland?

7. Slavonic studies

• Select any single work of Polish, Russian or Ukrainian literature or visual art (a film, a painting, an architectural drawing, or a poster) and discuss the ways in which it reflects some of the principal political and social issues of its age. 2. ‘Images of the past are central to concepts of contemporary national identity.’ Discuss with respect to either Polish, Ukrainian or Russian culture. You may focus on one work of contemporary literature or art from one of the three countries, or you may examine the rhetoric of contemporary politicians from one or more of the three counties. 3. ‘The history of every nation is constantly being rewritten to suit the needs of the present.’ Discuss with respect to either Poland, Ukraine or Russia. 4. Select a Polish, Russian or Ukrainian writer, artist or filmmaker and discuss the relevance of their work for the present. Be sure to support your discussion by offering a detailed analysis of one work. 5. ‘The current Russian waged war on Ukraine is a war of identity.’ Discuss.

8. Architecture Design

You are challenged to design a new building somewhere on the Fitzwilliam College site. This building will serve as a hub for interaction between teaching staff and students, where they can share and explore ideas. During the design process, you will need to think about what programmes or activities need to be accommodated in the new building. For instance, you can consider including spaces for social interaction such as a new cafe, as well as spaces to have quieter conversations in groups of different sizes. You must also consider possible locations for the new building within the College site, taking into consideration the other College buildings in your design, as well as the landscaped areas preserving mature trees as much as possible. This should be seen as an opportunity to create an interesting relationship between the interior and exterior spaces.

Submission Details: 

• Project Title that best describes your design intention and final design solution
• Design Narrative of 500 words that concisely explains your design inspiration, design objective, and final design strategy developed to meet your design objective
• Drawings that show the following: 1) floor plan(s) of your building at 1:200 scale 2) one elevation and one section of the building that best describes main features of the design solution 3) one site plan that indicates the location of the building in relation to existing buildings in the college site. A detailed site plan showing the ground floor plans of the individual buildings is available on the essay competition website for reference, but you should produce a new drawing for the competition submission. 4) one perspective drawing of your building that highlights your design intention and shows the placement of a new building in relation to existing college buildings nearby

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Fitzwilliam College launches Land Economy essay competition

Fitzwilliam College has announced its annual essay competition, including an essay on Land Economy. The competition is open to school students in their penultimate year of education (for example, Year 12 in England).

The essays must be written in English, following guidelines detailed in the page at the below link, and submitted by 6pm on Wednesday 1st March.

Fitzwilliam college(Cambridge university) essay comepetition results

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History of Art

History of Art is offered as a full three-year course.

Part I in History of Art offers a broad introduction to the history of art and architecture, together with detailed study of the superb works of art and architecture in Cambridge colleges and museums.

Part II offers a variety of more specialised options on subjects ranging from the medieval period to contemporary art, as well as two compulsory courses, one on critical and methodological approaches to the subject, and one on the concept and practice of display. Both parts of the Tripos also include dissertations. Further details can be found on the  Department’s website .

History of Art at Pembroke

Pembroke is close to the Department, which is just a five minute walk along Trumpington Street. We are even closer to the Fitzwilliam Museum, which has one of the finest collections of art in the country and is used extensively in teaching. Seminars and lectures are also regularly held at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge’s outstanding gallery of modern and contemporary art, and in the world-class buildings and collections of many of the colleges. 

We have a vibrant community of graduate as well as undergraduate students in the subject.  Students get to know the College’s art historians as well as other Fellows well through formal teaching, visits to local collections and buildings, and informal social gatherings. The College offers plenty of opportunities for undergraduate and graduate art historians including travel grants and life drawing classes (currently every Monday evening during term time) and a college art and photography society known as PAPS. There is a well-equipped college Art Room for those interested in undertaking practical art and design, while a recent bequest has made Pembroke Library one of the richest college libraries for the subject, with several thousand books on art and architectural history. These practical and financial opportunities, coupled with the presence of Fellows in the subject and the college's own outstanding architecture, make Pembroke one of the most vibrant and supportive colleges for the study of History of Art.

No A-level subject is stipulated or deemed inappropriate. If Art and Design is offered as one of three A Levels, it is desirable that an A* be achieved in a subject other than (or in addition to) Art and Design. Achieving an A* in an academic, essay-based subject would be preferable. No prior qualification in the History of Art is necessary, as we are keen to encourage applications from interested students from all backgrounds. Applicants should prepare for interview by reading around the subject, looking at specific buildings and works of art, and considering these in an informed and critical manner.

Pembroke History of Art Teaching Staff

Prof polly blakesley - director of studies.

A historian of Russian and European art from the 18th to the early 20th century, Polly was educated at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Moscow, and is now Professor of Russian and European Art at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. She is also the co-founder of the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre ( www.ccrac.org.uk ), a leading research centre dedicated to Russian and Soviet art, through which she has run a number of collaborative projects with museums, galleries and universities abroad.

Polly is a Syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and has curated and contributed to the catalogues of exhibitions in London, Cambridge, Moscow, Darmstadt and Washington DC. She has also served on the boards of the Hamilton Kerr Institute and Kettle’s Yard and as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she curated the exhibition  Russia and the Arts  and advised on its partner exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow in 2016. 

Careers  

Recent Pembroke graduates in History of Art have embarked on careers in national and local museums and galleries, auction houses, journalism, and arts publishing or PR. Some have decided to undertake teaching or postgraduate research, and others have successfully transferred their verbal, visual, and analytical skills to non-arts-related career paths. The course offers particularly good preparation for careers that place emphasis on visual literacy, such as advertising and marketing.  Whatever their destination, students tend to become passionate about their course, and retain close ties with their lecturers and supervisors after they graduate. Current undergraduates are happy to discuss their experience of the History of Art Tripos with prospective applicants.

Further Information 

For further information on the specifics of the course and admissions criteria please see the page about  History of Art on the University website. 

Professor Rosalind Polly Blakesley

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Armstrong Arts and Humanities Essay Competition 2025

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The Armstrong Arts and Humanities Essay Competition is open to students attending state-maintained schools in the UK, and who are in their penultimate year of education (Year 12 in England and Wales, S5 in Scotland, or Year 13 in Northern Ireland).

The essay questions cover the breadth of arts and humanities subjects offered at undergraduate level at the University of Cambridge. Questions are often multi-disciplinary, designed to encourage entries to consider the connections between various subjects, and to allow entries to approach the question from varying angles. Effective essays will present a clear argument supported by specific, relevant examples.

Submissions for the 2024 Essay Competition will open in February 2025. Students can register their interest to be notified with submissions open:  https://cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9FjegVensriMJAq

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