Every Wednesday, within the walls of the Ashmolean Museum, the Krasis Scholars gather for an object-centred symposium – and a cup of tea.

Devised by classicist Dr Sam Gartland and Teaching Curator Dr Jim Harris, Krasis is an interdisciplinary, museum-based teaching and learning programme for undergraduate and taught postgraduate students at the University of Oxford. Each termly iteration addresses one overarching theme, ranging from ‘Power and Imitation’ to ‘Absence’, with each afternoon symposium led from the disciplinary specialty of one of the eight Ashmolean Junior Teaching Fellows. The fellows and scholars, weaponed with notebooks and underneath the eye of Dr Harris, explore first-hand how the Ashmolean’s objects, galleries, and collections can teach what you do not yet know.

In this conversation with Dr Harris, we discuss why he brought the symposium back to life in the Ashmolean.

“Krasis,” Dr Harris tells me, “is a Greek word meaning ‘a good mixture.’ The name is perfect for it.” The name aptly reflects the purpose of the program as a series of disciplinarily-mixed symposia – an admittedly Grecocentric framing, favored by classicist Dr Gartland. 

But why create such a program? Dr Harris tells me that the point is “knowledge creation… knowledge exchange. We have people from anthropology, linguistics, and all sorts of disciplines; there’s you – a philosopher and theologian. They’re able to bring an informed perspective and answer the same question in eight different ways, depending on who they are. And that is exciting. So that’s the point of Krasis, and why I do it is because of the point of it.” And, above all, “because it’s fun!” 

Part of this programme’s aim is to ensure that participation in Krasis remains undemanding for all involved. The scholars and fellows, all Oxford students or academics, are “already under the cosh all the time,” Dr Harris tells me. You might be asked to complete a short reading beforehand, or watch a play, or perhaps even listen to music, but otherwise the only requirement is to bring your mind – sharpened and prepared to bear. 

This term, the 23rd iteration of Krasis, the theme is beauty. At the start of every term, the teaching fellows meet with Dr Harris to choose the theme and discuss how they might bring their research to bear on the theme. Then they think about kinds or types of objects, resources, collections, and galleries to use for the symposia. “Sometimes,” Dr Harris tells me, “the joy is that we’ve got exactly the thing they need. But sometimes we do have to think more laterally about things.” But that, to teaching curator Dr Harris, is one of the most exciting things – to see how the collections can be drawn on, to see how never-used-before objects can be put to work in teaching. “The objects have just been sitting there,” Dr Harris tells me, “kind of waiting for the right person to come and look at them.” In this sense, the Ashmolean space itself shapes the kinds of conversations in Krasis. If the symposia took place elsewhere – “Pitt Rivers, for example” – there would be a vastly different array of material to work with, and would “no doubt” attract a different kind of participant and a different kind of teaching fellow. 

So far, our symposia have taken us from the witch-hunts of the early modern period to the mythic culture of the viking age. At first glance, neither era seems particularly concerned with ‘beauty’ as we now understand it. But after studying a fascinating array of objects – The Four Witches (1497) by Albrecht Dürer, Viking brooches, and the like – I came to see things differently. The early modern witch hysteria echoed the Platonic view of aesthetics as morally charged; consider the stereotypical image of a witch: an ugly, decrepit female whose external appearance reflects internal moral corruption. On the other hand, the art of the Viking Age shows its rich decorative traditions: beasts, filigree, ornamentation, runestones, stave churches, all following conceptions of beauty preserved in Old Norse literature. 

None of the things which we conventionally want to know about the object – who made it? How did it get here? – are accessible in the study room. We don’t read a label or understand the object in relation to a gallery or other objects. The object is, effectively, “mute.” This exactly is the benefit: There is a lot to be understood simply from examining an object. There is a life to be established, a life which you cannot establish from a simple lecture or pre-reading. 

During the symposia, I noticed that Dr Harris takes a back seat: he observes us quietly and with a smile. When I ask him why this is, he laughs. “Because it’s not mine,” Dr Harris explains to me, “I can’t quite get stuck in it the way that I would like to. That’s not my job in this; it’s not to steer the symposia, but to labor it. The ‘sinister lurking’ is the outcome.” 

Why should a student think about becoming a Krasis participant? Dr Harris tells me that “there’s something liberating about being in a place where you have the chance to think, but where there is no demand on you, and where you are not being assessed.” He also hopes that the fellows take away a confidence and a capacity to bear upon their teaching.

The museum should be a place of teaching, learning, and human ingenuity. “Because the museum otherwise,” Dr Harris concludes, “is in danger of dying.”

Every Magdalen member remembers their first encounter with the Waynflete Building. Sticking out a little obtrusively amidst the serenity of Addison’s Walk and the college’s two grandiose deer parks, the purpose-built, ‘60s-era block is hardly the accommodation most undergraduates had in mind when they received their offer. Especially not from the college that inspired C.S. Lewis’ Narnia.

It was almost certainly the aubergine-purple carpets that dashed my admittedly pretentious vision for a room, both quaint and saturated in dark academia, on that first day of Freshers’ Week. Or perhaps it was the radioactive green wardrobes. The glaringly non-existent sink equally did not help matters. 

Still, when I look back on that morning, it is not the disturbing interior design decisions that stand out. Nor is it even the tropical climate that greeted me immediately upon reaching the fourth floor, despite it having been an uncharacteristically chilly October (still a mystery to fellow ‘Riverside’ occupants). 

What comes rushing back isn’t my inaugural experience of the ‘Flete’ – as its residents affectionately nickname the Waynflete building – but rather the unmistakable, melodramatic camaraderie that seemed to thrum through its beige walls. Behind the imposing colour of my cupboards, I had relished discovering decades of choicely worded protests and gripes, juxtaposed with innumerable ‘Long Live Waynflete’ avowals and hearts all scrawled into its insides. 

It was a tale of two halves: a study of how somewhere ostensibly drab could nurture such a remarkable warmth. A kind of original ‘misery porn,’ if you will, where collective vexations forged meaningful connections. 

1^st-year Magdalen student and fellow-Waynflete-survivor Abigail Grant captured this very sentiment and more in her Waynflete Building Exhibition, This Room Their Lives.

Stepping into room 13 of the Waynflete, where her love letter to the building’s inhabitants is housed, visitors are thrust into a time capsule. Yet, it remains unmistakably the room of a student you may come across now, ageless in its charm and unruliness. With the gentle hum of a Weezer tune in the background, I was immediately charmed by the careful curation of books, photographs, and posters that together told the story of an undergraduate who could have belonged to the class of 1995 or 2025.

The anecdotes Grant has dexterously sourced from dozens of alumni, detailing their experiences’ of living in the Waynflete, are perhaps the most compelling part of her exhibition. There are too many wonderful tales to recount them all, but one in particular stands out. Estelle Shirbon (matric. 1994) recounts how, on first entering the Waynflete, she was left “horrified.” Yet, she found some of her closest friends between the purple floors and green wardrobes. 

Grant has crafted an ode to a building that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to poetic recollection. It takes true patience and flair to sift through all the whinging, all the grumbling – and voices like Catriona Seth (matric. 1982), who professes, “I never once regretted leaving the Waynflete!” – to produce something so heartfelt on the other side. 

Michael McGowan, matriculating in 1982, wonders what the college’s founder would make of the rise and fall of the building to which he lends his name. “Unlike it,” he remarks, William Waynflete was “the ultimate survivor…having died of old age in his bed despite serving on both sides of the Wars of Roses.” It has to be said, however, that many a middle-class Magdalen Fresher – myself included – have at times treated their sojourn in the ‘Flete’ as akin to a noble sacrifice. 

Grant does well to tension this entitled tone against the quiet luxury of living amongst so many of your dearest friends, sharing everything from late-night gossip to a singular kitchen that does not produce inexplicable odours. Indeed, Grant told Cherwell how she “wanted to create this exhibition to honour both the loathing and the love people have for the Flete,” admitting that while “it’s clearly not the most beautiful building…it’s full of memories, and…didn’t want those to be lost when it was demolished.” If her ultimate intention was to show off “the kind of real history,” she says she tends towards, a history centred around “people falling in love, making lifelong friends,” Grant certainly achieved it.

The photos, which deck almost every inch of the room, are deftly selected. They demonstrate that while mohawks and terrible polo shirts might separate more recent Magdalen freshers from older ones, they share a significant, common experience.

The Waynflete is a building that everyone loves to hate, a building that oftentimes seems to pose more challenges than it is worth. Even in death, its imminent absence – more than provoking fond memories – comes with further practical problems for undergraduates. Recently, second – and third-year Magdalen students have protested their accommodation prospects now that freshers will be situated inside college walls, which had previously been their stomping ground. 

If the Fletes’ long history is to be boiled down to one anecdote, Grant’s rewarding find of one describing the Great Fire of ’82 is a good fit. The image of 70 first years bellyaching as they stand on the pavement in their pyjamas in the middle of the night – but silently revelling in the comradeship and pandemonium of their situation – is emblematic of the melodrama that ties together the diverse inhabitants of the Waynflete Building’s 60+ year tenure.

Long Live Waynflete, indeed.