Fandom and The Archers audio book Chapter 8, Timothy Vercelloti

A Year in Ambridge: Introducing American Students to English Village Culture through The Archers

Timothy Vercellotti

Global cultures courses are a staple of general education requirements at American universities. Teaching a cultures course poses challenges, however, including appealing to students from all academic disciplines and building a cohesive learning experience around a somewhat amorphous topic. English village culture appeals to American students, some of whom have been exposed to the subject through literature or history courses, or through films or television. The challenge of structuring a course on village culture becomes more manageable with help from The Archers and the intellectual fan community known as Academic Archers. This chapter provides a case study of a university course that explores scholarly treatments of English village culture, enriched with examples from episodes of The Archers and the Academic Archers canon of research. The course follows a framework of a ‘constructed year’ in Ambridge, beginning with Burns Night in January and finishing with the Christmas pantomime, and including reflections on Shrove Tuesday pancake races, village cricket season, the summer fête, the Flower and Produce Show, and Remembrance Sunday. The course not only introduces students to village culture; it also immerses them in radio drama, a genre of storytelling that, while well-established in the UK, is unfamiliar to many Americans.

Dr Timothy Vercellotti is a professor of political science at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, and director of the university’s London summer program. He teaches courses on political behaviour, media and politics, and public opinion polling. Dr Vercellotti holds a PhD. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has completed extensive post-doctoral work in all things Ambridge.