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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Much scholarship about the legal aspects behind the Civil Rights Movement centers around the work of Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court. In a discussion on this topic, Tomiko Brown-Nagin asks what this history would look like if the Supreme Court wasn’t the main focus, and examines the unsung heroes of desegregation.
By Allen J. Wilcox
In her novel, Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver celebrates the lush fecundity of nature. The main character marvels at the way her ovulation dependably comes with the full moon.
It’s a poetic image – but is there any evidence for it?
Actually, no. It’s true that the length of the average menstrual cycle is close to the length of the lunar cycle. But like
By Rod Rhodes
Ministers want to make a difference. Prime ministers talk about their legacy. Governments are always trying to reform something. They ask ‘what can we change?’ They should also ask ‘what could we lose?’
By Jonathan Crowe
In my last three posts I’ve introduced you to the world of biological information, taking you from the storage of biological information in libraries called genomes, which house information in individual books called chromosomes (themselves divided into chapters called genes), to the way the cell makes use of that stored information to manufacture the molecular machines called proteins.
By Louis René Beres
Today, Israel’s leadership, continuing to more or less disregard the nation’s special history, still acts in ways that are neither tragic nor heroic. Unwilling to accept the almost certain future of protracted war and terror, one deluded prime minister after another has sought to deny Israel’s special situation in the world. Hence, he or she has always been ready to embrace, unwittingly, then-currently-fashionable codifications of collective suicide.
By Louis René Beres
Israel, after President Barack Obama’s May 2011 speech on “Palestinian self-determination” and regional “democracy,” awaits a potentially tragic fate. Nonetheless, to the extent that Prime Minister Netanyahu should become complicit in the expected territorial dismemberments, this already doleful fate could quickly turn from genuine tragedy to pathos and abject farce.
By Rebecca Alpert
Growing up as a baseball fan in the 1950s and 60s, I could not wait until the All-Star game rolled around every July. (Imagine my delight during the years when there was a second game in August!) Back then, fans didn’t choose the players, so I would eagerly anticipate the announcement of the teams in the newspapers. Then I would rummage through my baseball card collection to pull out the All-Stars and admire their accomplishments. Watching the game on television was thrilling to me, no matter the outcome. If I was in
By Chris Williams
Friedrich Engels once dismissed the Welsh, amongst others, as a ‘non-historic’ people, destined to be absorbed into the grander story of the English nation-state. Much of the subsequent history of Wales has proven him wrong, at least on that point, but carving out a distinct niche for the written history has always been a challenge.
We bid a sad farewell to one of our most dear authors and friends, Bruce Haynes. An Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal and McGill University, Bruce was a pioneer and champion of historical performance practice with numerous solo and ensemble recordings to his credit. He was a founding member of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, alongside his wife and
By Anatoly Liberman
Because of the frequency of the words the, this, that, these, those, them, their, there, then, and with, the letter h probably occurs in our texts more often than any other (for Shakespeare’s epoch thee and thou should have been added). But then of course we have think, three, though, through, thousand, and words with ch, sh,
What to do on a summer afternoon in London? Around 1600 you could cross the Thames by bridge or boat and take in a show in Southwark, the Elizabethan entertainment district. Once there, you had a choice. You could either see the latest play by Shakespeare, Dekker or Jonson or watch bears with names like Sackerson, Harry Hunks, Nan Stiles or Bess of Bromley be chained to a stake and set upon by specially trained mastiff dogs.
Have you heard the Word…for Word? Oxford University Press is proud to partner with the Bryant Park Reading Room in support of the Word for Word Book Club. The series kicks off today, with six more Clubs scheduled for the summer. Be sure to stop by the Reading Room early for a FREE* copy of the book club selections.
By Elvin Lim
The tragic flaw of American democracy is that we seek the same qualities in candidates for political office as we do in the movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most recent case in point.
Celebrities have name recognition. They are easy on the eyes. And they pretend really well.
According to some, today is ‘Lucky Penny Day’. The OED describes a ‘lucky penny’ as usually one that is bent or perforated, or sometimes an old or foreign coin. In the early nineteenth century, a ‘luck-penny’ was defined as ‘the cash which the seller gives back to the buyer after the latter has paid him; it is given back with the hope that it may prove a lucky’. It’s also recorded that the participants would usually also spit on their palms to seal the deal.
The Oxford Comment speaks with a teenage crossword genius and then takes you on a tour of the OED archive.
The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. Here is a sequence of podcasts with Roger Luckhurst, who has edited a new edition of Dracula for Oxford World’s Classics, recorded by George Miller of Podularity.