I recently completed a three-month placement with ‘School of Empire’ hosted at Rugby School. Launched in 2020, ‘Schools of Empire: Class and Colonialism, c.1750–c.1945’ is an ongoing project that seeks to explore the historical intersection of education and empire, focusing on the themes of class, colonialism, gender, and race. My project examined how the musical culture of English public schools in the nineteenth and early twentieth century reflected and reinforced ideals of masculinity, militarism and imperialism as part of schoolboy identity.
Throughout the three months I made several visits to Rugby School as well as the archives of St Paul’s School, London. I digitised a large range of sources relating to the musical traditions of both schools including songbooks, concert programmes and hymn books. These rich sources formed the basis of several blog posts for the Schools of Empire website (https://www.schoolsofempireproject.org/) which examined the prominence of imperial values as part of public school life.
My first blog post titled ‘“Let our voices the praises proclaim of our soldierly, brave Rifle Corps!”
Examining the Musical Identities of The Rugby School Rifle Corps (c. 1860-1945)’ explores the musical culture connected to the public school rifle corps (the predecessor of the CCF) and its ties to militaristic and imperial values within the culture of the public school. (You can read the full article here: https://www.schoolsofempireproject.org/musical-identity-rifle-corps)
Another blog post, ‘Musical Manliness: An Examination of the Repertoire and Rituals of ‘Hall-Singing’ at Rugby School’ examined how ‘Hall-Singing’, an informal student-led musical practice popular in the early nineteenth century, was heavily dominated by themes of duty, leadership, patriotism and manliness. My examination of the repertoire and rituals of these unsupervised musical events, highlights how students not only understood the expectations placed on them but actually reinforced these expectations on each other. (https://www.schoolsofempireproject.org/hall-singing)
I also had the opportunity to engage with staff and students throughout the three months. I presented papers at Rugby’s history seminar ‘Hydra’ as well as to music scholars at their annual finalists dinner. I also designed and facilitated two 90-minute workshops for students based on key primary-sources from my research. After learning how music can operate as a tool for identity formation and reflection, students were tasked with creating a musical response which best represented Rugby School students today. I then designed resources for teachers to recreate these sessions in their classrooms which were published on the Schools of Empire website. (You can view them here: https://www.schoolsofempireproject.org/teach).
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Rugby with the Schools of Empire project. I not only gained knowledge in a whole new area of research, I also had the opportunity to be immersed in a completely new environment and build enriching relationships with both staff and students. I am particularly appreciative to Dr Timothy Guard, Dr Thomas Smith and Jennifer Hunt for their support throughout this project!
The placements scheme is a fantastic opportunity to gain new experiences as part of your DPhil/PhD experience and I really urge any OOC students to consider applying for one!
