The failures of leadership… the destructive power of beauty… the quest for fame… the plight of women… the brutality of war… Such themes have endured for over 2,700 years in Homer’s classic The Iliad — from the flight of Helen and Paris, to the fury of Menelaus and Agamemnon, to the fight between Hector and Achilles. We sat down with Barbara Graziosi and Anthony Verity, the writer of the introduction and translator respectively, to discuss the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Iliad.

How did the Ancient Greek performance tradition inform the text of The Iliad?

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What can you tell us about the writer of The Iliad?

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How is the anger of Achilles portrayed in the poem?

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How is war, violence, and death portrayed in the poem?

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Describe the translation process.

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Barbara Graziosi is Professor of Classics at Durham University. She has written extensively on Homer.

Anthony Verity taught Classics in several schools in England, his last job being Master of Dulwich College. He has translated Theocritus and Pindar for Oxford World’s Classics, his OWC edition of The Illiad was published in September, and he is currently working on a version of Homer’s Odyssey. Read his previous blog post: “Who needs another translation of Homer’s Iliad?”

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics onTwitter and Facebook.

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Annette Funicello

The MMC premiered on 3 October 1955 on the ABC television network to coincide with the opening of Disneyland. MMC was Disney’s second venture in network television, the first being an anthology series, the short-lived Disneyland that later became Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

MMC was essentially a variety show for children, complete with a newsreel, a cartoon, a serial, musical numbers performed by the Mouseketeers, and talent and comedy segments. The show aired five days a week in the afternoons and each day of the week had a different theme:

• Monday: Fun with Music.
• Tuesday: Guest Star.
• Wednesday: Anything Can Happen.
• Thursday: Circus.
• Friday: Talent Round-up.

One unique feature of the show was the Mouseketeer Roll Call, in which many (but not all) of that day’s line-up of regular performers would introduce themselves rhythmically by name to the television audience. In the serials, teens faced challenges in everyday situations, often overcome by their common sense or through recourse to the advice of respected elders.

Cast

Originally, Disney wanted “ordinary” kids on the show, but his idea was abandoned as the audition process began for the show in March 1955. Thirty-nine children were hired to become “Mouseketeers,” with nine becoming the “Red Team” which consisted of Funicello, Tommy Cole, Darlene Gillespie, Bobby Burgess, Doreen Tracey, Cubby O’Brien, Karen Pendleton, Lonnie Burr, and Sharon Baird. Cheryl Holdridge joined the team during the second season.

MMC was hosted by Jimmie Dodd, a songwriter and the “Head Mouseketeer”, who provided leadership both on and off screen. In addition to his other contributions, he often provided short segments encouraging young viewers to make the right moral choices. These little homilies became known as “Doddisms”.

Dodd composed and performed much of the music for the show, including the “Mickey Mouse March” that opened the show, as well as the slow “alma mater” version that closed each episode.

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Roy Williams, a staff artist at Disney, also appeared in the show as the “Big Mouseketeer”. It was Williams who suggested that all characters on the show wear the Mickey Mouse ears (“Mouseke-ears”), which he helped create.

Annette Funicello

The “Mouseketeers” performed in a variety of musical and dance numbers on the show as well as some informational segments, but it was Annette Funicello who was Walt Disney’s favorite. Born on 22 October 1942 in Utica, New York, the family had moved to California when she was still young. Disney himself saw her performing the lead role in “Swan Lake” at her ballet school’s year-end recital in Burbank and decided to have her audition along with two hundred other children. Annette became the last Mouseketeer of the twenty-four that was picked.

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Annette was the only Mouseketeer that Disney kept under exclusive contract. He personally managed aspects of her career, and created one of the show’s serials especially for her, a serial called “Annette.” Disney had plans for a film career for her and fashioned the serial to see if she was ready for film. The other popular serials on MMC, such as “The Adventures of Spin and Marty,” “Adventure in Dairyland,” and the “Hardy Boys Mysteries,” gave way to “Annette” which aired during the third season of the MMC and was the last serial broadcast on the show.

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Through Disney’s supervision, Annette appeared on other TV shows, notably, Danny Thomas’ Make Room for Daddy in 1958. Disney also featured her in several of his own productions like the TV series Zorro, and the films The Shaggy Dog and Babes in Toyland.

In the 1960s, Funicello went on to co-star with Frankie Avalon in many Bikini Beach movies through the American International studios. Disney gave his permission for her to appear in these movies as long as she wore a bathing suit that didn’t show her navel. She also made some popular records, notably the hit “Tall Paul” in 1959.

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In the 1980s, she became the celebrity spokesperson for Skippy Peanut Butter, appearing on many TV commercials.

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A MMC “Reunion Special” aired on NBC in 1980:

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The original MMC aired from 1955 until it was cancelled in 1959. Other versions of the show aired later, like The New Mickey Mouse Club (1977-79), The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989-1996) and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006 and current).

Dodd died in 1964 of cancer in Hawaii. Funicello died on 8 April 2013 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis.

Now it’s time to say goodbye….
Why? Because we LIKE YOU!

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Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television.

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Image Credit: Photographs provided by author.

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A two-member video team from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) was also there to conduct interviews with the thought leaders in the field as part of the MyCardio interview series. The ESC and European Heart Journal are now present at all the major cardiology congresses worldwide to record these MyCardio interviews and almost 200 interviews available on the European Heart Journal website, covering a wide spectrum of topics in cardiology.

A selection of the interviews for Cardiology 2013 is presented below.

Salim Yusuf on salt’s implications for cardiovascular health

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Franz Messerli on hypertension

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Joseph Loscalzo on personalized cardiovascular medicine

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Peter Libby on atherosclerosis, inflammation, and acute myocardial infarction

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Bertram Pitt on the history of Cardiology Update in Davos

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The European Heart Journal is an international, English language, peer-reviewed journal dealing with Cardiovascular Medicine. It is an official Journal of the European Society of Cardiology and is published weekly. The journal aims to publish the highest quality material, both clinical and scientific, on all aspects of Cardiovascular Medicine. It includes articles related to research findings, technical evaluations, and reviews. In addition it provides a forum for the exchange of information on all aspects of Cardiovascular Medicine, including education issues.

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How did the Automatic Computing Engine make it possible to invent the first modern computer?

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B. Jack Copeland is the Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, and author of Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age, Alan Turing’s Electronic Brain, and Colossus. He is the editor of The Essential Turing. Read the new revelations about Turing’s death after Copeland’s investigation into the inquest.

Visit the Turing hub on the Oxford University Press UK website for the latest news in the Centenary year (2012). Read our previous posts on Alan Turing including: “Maurice Wilkes on Alan Turing” by Peter J. Bentley, “Turing : the irruption of Materialism into thought” by Paul Cockshott, “Alan Turing’s Cryptographic Legacy” by Keith M. Martin, and “Turing’s Grand Unification” by Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens, “Computers as authors and the Turing Test” by Kees van Deemter, and “Alan Turing, Code-Breaker” by Jack Copeland.

For more information about Turing’s codebreaking work, and to view digital facsimiles of declassified wartime ‘Ultra’ documents, visit The Turing Archive for the History of Computing. There is also an extensive photo gallery of Turing and his war at www.the-turing-web-book.com.

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Mary Fulbrook is Professor of German History at University College London and the author of A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. A leading authority on modern German history, her books include Dissonant Lives: Generations and Violence through the German Dictatorships, A Concise History of Germany, A History of Germany 1918-2000: The Divided Nation, German National Identity after the Holocaust, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, and The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker. Fulbrook is also a Fellow of the British Academy, a former Chair of the German History Society, and a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Foundation for the former Concentration Camps at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.

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In this interview on Today, Riley discusses the rise of interfaith marriages and what that means for America.

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Naomi Schaefer Riley is a former Wall Street Journal editor and writer whose work focuses on higher education, religion, philanthropy, and culture. She is the author of ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America, God on the Quad, and The Faculty Lounges.

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For Black History Month, I wrote about an American Television pioneer: Nat “King” Cole, who was the first African American to host a television show. Since many have dubbed March as “National Women’s Month,” I focus on another pioneer of early television, Dinah Shore.

American television of the 1950s was a haven for white male artists and hosts. African Americans were scarce on TV, appearing only as guest artists on musical variety shows. Women television artists fared no better. Of the many female singers active at the time (Lena Horne, Rosemary Clooney, Judy Garland, and numerous others), the only woman singer to host her own TV show was Dinah Shore.

Frances “Fanny” Rose Shore was born on 29 February 1916, in Winchester, Tennessee. After graduating from Vanderbilt University, she moved to New York City to pursue a singing career. Her first job was as a singer at WNEW, a radio station in New York, where she sang with Frank Sinatra who was hired around the same time. During one show, she sang “Dinah,” and a DJ who couldn’t remember her name called her the “Dinah girl.” The name stuck, and she used it for the rest of her life. She sang and recorded with Xavier Cugat’s band, and recorded her first big solo hit, “Yes, My Darling Daughter” in 1941.

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With her radio and recording successes, she was signed to host her own radio show, “Call to Music” in 1943. That same year she appeared in her first movie, “Thank Your Lucky Stars” starring Eddie Cantor. She became immensely popular, touring to entertain US troops during World War II and recording several hit records. Shore also appeared in musical films throughout the 1940s, including Belle of the Yukon (1944) and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946).

Like many radio stars, Dinah Shore made the move to television. In 1951, she made her television debut on The Ed Wynn Show, and also made a guest appearance on Bob Hope’s first NBC television special. These appearances resulted in NBC assigning her own regular TV show, The Dinah Shore Show in November 1951. Like many programs at the time, the show was given two 15-minute time slots during the week. In 1956, Chevrolet sponsored Dinah to host two one-hour specials, and their success led to Dinah Shore’s Chevy Show, a regular musical variety show that ran from 1956 until 1961, running in a Sunday evening time slot on NBC.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shore’s success on the show can be attributed to her conservative vocal choices and middlebrow sensibilities. She, like many TV stars of the decade, was content to sing “standards” and “Tin Pan Alley” songs that were familiar to the TV audience. In particular, she was noted for her famed signature theme song, the catchy Chevrolet jingle, “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” accompanied by her closing gesture of a sweeping smooch to the audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song was helped by the fact that its sponsor was an “all American” car, and the lyric: “America’s the greatest land of all,” also affirmed the conservative TV audience’s sensibilities. After the Chevy Show, Shore went on host three daytime television programs: Dinah’s Place (1970 to 1974), the 90-minute talk show Dinah! (1974 to 1980), and Dinah and Friends (1979 to 1984).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Her TV career ended in 1991 after a two-year run on cable TV’s The Nashville Network with the talk show, A Conversation with Dinah.

Dinah Shore achieved much success in her television career, winning the Emmy Awards for Best Female Singer (1954-55), Best Female Personality (1956-57), and Best Actress in a Musical or Variety Series (1959). However, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show rarely entered the top 20 ratings during its run, as it ran against CBS’s General Electric Theater hosted by Ronald Reagan, which regularly won the time slot (Reagan also had a better lead-in with The Ed Sullivan Show).

Besides TV, Dinah Shore was an avid golfer, and supporter of women’s golf. She founded the Colgate (and now Nabisco) Dinah Shore Tournament on the LPGA tour. Dinah Shore passed away on 24 February 1994 in Beverly Hills, California, after a brief battle with ovarian cancer.

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television.

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Image Credit: Photograph provided by author.

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Political economist Mark Blyth, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, explains how austerity leads to low growth and hurts economies from local to global.

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Mark Blyth is Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. He is the author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea and Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century.

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By Chloe Foster

We’re very pleased to annouce the winner of the Very Short Film competition 2013. The Very Short Film competition was launched in partnership with The Guardian in October 2012. Students were asked to make a creative and inspiring one minute film about a subject they feel passionately about. After hundreds of entries, we chose 12 longlisted films to go to the public vote. The vote then produced four finalists. After a live final on Wednesday, the winner was chosen and will receive £9000 towards their university education. And the winner is…Sally Le Page with her film on Evolution. Congratulations Sally!

Winner of the Very Short Film competition, Evolution.

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There were four brilliant finalists and all the judges agreed it was a very close contest. The other films were Superconductivity by Christian Foss, Gay Marriage by Hannah Witton, and Geology by Maia Krall Fry.

• The audience take a quick break whilst the judges deliberate

   

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• Sally being presented with the winning cheque

   

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• OUP publisher, Luciana, announcing the winner

   

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• Finalists Maia and Hannah awaiting the result

   

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• Finalist Christian being interviewed by a student journalist

   

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• Our judges! Judy Freidberg, Maggie O'Kane, Paul Boyd, John Mitchinson, and Luciana O'Flaherty

   

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• Winner Sally talking to VSI author Nigel Warburton and VSI editor Andrea Keegan

   

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• Sally being interviewed by judge, John Mitchinson

   

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Image credit: All images supplied by Monia Antonioli. Do not use without express permission.

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How do you view art forgers?

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What provokes an art forger to commit forgery?

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Jonathon Keats is a critic, journalist and artist. He is the art critic for San Francisco Magazine, and has contributed art criticism to Art & Antiques, Art + Auction, Art in America, ARTnews, Artweek, and Salon.com. His arts writing has also appeared in Wired Magazine, ForbesLife Magazine, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age and Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology. His conceptual art has been exhibited at venues including the Berkeley Art Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Wellcome Collection.

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How does the constitution influence the debate on health care?

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How can the United States maintain its civil liberties?

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What’s your take on Seidman’s views? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Louis Michael Seidman is Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University. His books include On Constitutional Disobedience, Our Unsettled Constitution, Equal Protection of the Laws, and Silence and Freedom.

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How did the idea of writing a book come about?

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What challenges are arbitrators facing now?

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How do you view the future of international commercial arbitration? 

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Nigel Blackaby, Constantine Partasides, Alan Redfern, and Martin Hunter are the authors of Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration: Fifth Edition. Nigel Blackaby is one of the partners of the international arbitration group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Washington, DC. Constantine Partasides is a one of the partners of the international arbitration group at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London. Alan Redfern is the barrister and international arbitrator at One Essex Court Chambers in London. Martin Hunter is currently a barrister and international arbitrator at One Essex Court Chambers.

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This week, in the spirit of our upcoming special issue on oral history’s evolving technologies, we want to (re)introduce everyone to the website Oral History in the Digital Age, a substantial collaboration between several institutions to “put museums, libraries, and oral historians in a position to address collectively issues of video, digitization, preservation, and intellectual property and to provide both a scholarly framework and regularly updated best practices for moving forward.”

We especially want to direct people to the site’s “Thinking Big” video series, which features reflections by top scholars on the evolving relationship between oral history and digital media. Below is one of the videos from the series, an interview with United States Senate historian and author of Doing Oral History Don Ritchie. We’ve also include a quiz to test readers on the oral history and digital media.

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“And I discovered that the basic fundamental practices of doing oral history have not changed. The face to face interviews, the types of things you need to do to research and to engage a person, to draw them out and to ask non-leading questions, open ended questions and things like that — that stayed the same regardless of what the technology is. But everything around it changed.”

Caitlin Tyler-Richards is the editorial/ media assistant at the Oral History Review. When not sharing profound witticisms at @OralHistReview, Caitlin pursues a PhD in African History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research revolves around the intersection of West African history, literature and identity construction, as well as a fledgling interest in digital humanities. Before coming to Madison, Caitlin worked for the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview and like them on Facebook to preview the latest from the Review, learn about other oral history projects, connect with oral history centers across the world, and discover topics that you may have thought were even remotely connected to the study of oral history. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on the OUPblog for addendum to past articles, interviews with scholars in oral history and related fields, and fieldnotes on conferences, workshops, etc.

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Love is in the air at Oxford University Press! As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, we’ve asked staff members from our offices in New York, Oxford, and Cary, NC, to share their favorite love songs. Read on for their selections, and be sure to tell us what your favorites are too. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Owen Keiter, Publicity
All-time is impossible, so…“Girlfriend” by Ty Segall is a feat of simplicity. Ty manages to stuff the headlong rush of a new, young, senseless love into about two breathless minutes. Nobody’s getting excited about the caveman-ish lyrics, which are almost incomprehensible anyway, but that’s not the point. The point is: when Ty hollers “I’ve got a girlfriend/She says she loves me,” you can tell it’s got him feeling like nothing can touch him.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nina Simone’s “Do I Move You” is a bluesy jazz plea for recognition from some indifferent lover that is at times sultry, needful, demanding and lustful.

Another classic by Ms. Simone, “Turn Me On,” is a simile-saturated reminiscence of a lover gone too long and the heightened anticipation of his/her return.

Finally, there is Miss Etta James’s version of “Deep in the Night.” Etta’s mournful moan reminds me how love can come to plagues one’s every thought and action:

Read a book and I think about you
Put it down and I think about you
I make some coffee and I think about you
Wash up the cup and I think about you
Wind the clock I think about you
Turn on the light and I think about you
Then I punch the pillow and think about you

Anwen Greenaway, Promotion Manager, Sheet Music
“True Love” by Cole Porter is one of the most memorable songs in the 1956 film High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. When I was a child my Dad had an old vinyl record of the film soundtrack. I remember being mesmerized by the film stills on the LP cover and listening to the record over and over at Christmas. It’s the soundtrack of all my childhood Christmases, a beautiful song, and unashamedly sentimental — what’s not to love about that?!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A fine romance, with no kisses
A fine romance, my friend, this is
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes, But you’re as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes….

Not a song with which to celebrate the start of a marriage. The song was written by Jerome Kern for the movie Swing Time, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fortunately, the movie also includes one of the great love songs of all time, “The Way You Look Tonight.” We picked that instead. And we asked Johnny Frigo to play at our wedding. It was perfect. It’s one of the great romantic songs:

Some day, when I’m awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you And the way you look tonight….

A month after we got married, I ran into Johnny playing a Columbus Day gig in Daley Plaza in Chicago. I reminded him who I was and told him how much we’d enjoyed his playing at our wedding. “Great night, great night,” he said. “And you weren’t so bad yourself.”

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Alyssa Bender joined Oxford University Press in July 2011 and works as a marketing associate in the Ac/Trade and Bibles divisions. Read her previous blog posts.

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Image Credit: scanned from period card from ca. 1910 with no notice of copyright via Wikimedia Commons

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In this video from Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, Peter Andreas, author of Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, explains America’s long relationship with smuggling and illicit trade.

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Peter Andreas is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. Andreas has written numerous books, including Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.

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James P. Sterba is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His latest work, From Rationality to Equality, publishes in February 2013. His previous publications include Three Challenges to Ethics (OUP, 2001), The Triumph of Practice over Theory in Ethics (OUP, 2005) and Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men? A Debate, with Warren Farrell (OUP, 2007). He is past president of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division).

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In this video, Gary A. Rosen, an intellectual property lawyer, explains that the radio industry made the same arguments as digital music providers in their similar battles with the music industry, nearly 100 years apart. The long and tortured career of Ira B. Arnstein, “the unrivaled king of copyright infringement plaintiffs,” opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States and the balance of power in Tin Pan Alley. Although Arnstein never won a case, author Gary A. Rosen shows that the decisions rendered ultimately defined some of the basic parameters of copyright law. Arnstein’s most consequential case, against a dumbfounded Cole Porter, established precedents that have provided the foundation for successful suits against George Harrison, Michael Bolton, and many others.

The music industry, radio in the 1920s, and the Internet today

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Ira Arnstein and the origin of “Unfair to Genius”

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Gary A. Rosen is the author of Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein. He has practiced intellectual property law for more than 25 years. Before entering private practice, he served as a law clerk to federal appellate judge and award-winning legal historian A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr.

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Christmas is, almost inescapably, a time of music. A lot of it is familiar and much-loved, but for those who might be looking for some more adventurous listening this year – beyond Slade, the Messiah, and Victorian carols – here are some pointers to alternative Christmas music from down the ages.

“The Sign of Judgment: the earth will be bathed in sweat”. This unlikely Christmas sentiment comes from the Song of the Sibyl, a 3rd-century Greek prophecy of the Apocalypse translated into Latin by St. Augustine and whose first lines he popularized as a form of Christmas greeting to non-Christians. The poem acquired a chant melody in 10th-century Catalonia, since when it has been a feature of the Christmas Eve liturgy in churches in Spain, Italy and Provence. This is the 10th-century Latin version, performed by Jordi Savall, the late Montserrat Figueras and La Capella Reial de Catalunya:

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The Song of the Sibyl could also be performed as liturgical drama, of the kind often found in the Middle Ages. The Officium pastorum of the 13th century is another example, and in its focus on the shepherds’ story one that begins to resemble our modern Nativity. This complete performance was given by Princeton University’s Guild for Early Music in 2011.

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A century or two later, the Christmas carol as we have come to know it began to emerge. Its origins lay in a mix of secular and sacred influences, including the French carole, an important social dance that required the dancers to accompany themselves with their own singing. By the 15th century, the carol as a form of song usually on the theme of Christmas had begun to establish itself, and there are many wonderful examples to discover; this setting of the Christmas lullaby Lullay, lullow from the Ritson Mansucript of c1460–75 – different from the more familiar “Coventry Carol” of the same name – retains something of those dancing origins.

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The Magnificat, Mary’s hymn of praise following the Anunciation (Luke 1: 46–55) is one of the very oldest songs associated with the Christmas story, and one of the most frequently set. Great Baroque Magnificats were composed by Claudio Monteverdi (his famous Vespers of 1610 conclude with two of them) and Bach, among others. But that by Heinrich Schütz combines the Venetian exuberance with the Lutheran poise of the other to exhilarating effect.

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Sidestepping the familiar Christmas favourites of the 18th and 19th centuries we encounter in the mid-20th century a major instrumental work, Olivier Messiaen’s La nativité du Seigneur (1935), a suite of nine scenes from the Christmas story, for organ. Messiaen, a devout Catholic, was possibly the 20th century’s greatest composer of religious music, as well as one of its finest organists. His musical language employed a variety of systematic procedures and a sometimes obscure symbolism, but there is no getting away from the extraordinary power and often tender characterisation of his music. (The capricious baby Jesus in the opening movement, La vierge et l’enfant, is a particular delight.) Both sides be heard in the virtuoso final movement, Dieu parmi nous, performed here by one of Messiaen’s leading interpreters, Dame Gillian Weir:

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Another leading composer of contemporary religious music has been Sir John Tavener. Unlike Messiaen, Tavener has drawn widely from a variety of faiths in the creation of his personal theology, in particular the Greek Orthodox Church, of which he was a member for many years. Works like Ikon of the Nativity (1991), which draw on Orthodox chants and liturgical practice, retain a strange and ancient mysticism beneath their apparently simple surfaces.

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Is John Adams’s El Niño (1999–2000) the 21st century’s answer to the Messiah? Perhaps. In this “Nativity oratorio” the composer of the so-called “news operas” Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic turns his dramatic hand to the Christmas story, setting texts from the Bible and the Wakefield Mystery Plays (more medieval liturgical drama), as well as several South American poets. This extract comes from the final two sections of Part I, Se habla de Gabriel and The Christmas Star:

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Finally, and to bring us right up to date, I’ve opted for Schnee (2008) by the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. A secular choice, for certain, but if I had to choose a work that perfectly captures the frozen sunshine of a cold Christmas morning it would be this.

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Looking for an easy way to play these in one jingle-free session? Try this Spotify playlist:

Tim Rutherford-Johnson is co-editor of The Oxford Dictionary of Music Sixth Edition, with Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. He has worked for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (now Grove Music Online) since 1999 and until 2010 was the editor responsible for the dictionary’s coverage of 20th- and 21st century music. He has published and lectured on several contemporary composers, and regularly reviews new music for both print and online publications. Visit Tim’s blog here, or find him on Twitter @moderncomp.

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With Thanksgiving quickly approaching in the United States, we thought that it would be interesting to highlight ten fun facts on the holiday from the newly released The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Second Edition. Additionally, you will find an interview with Editor in Chief Andrew Smith dispelling common myths associated with the origin of Thanksgiving.

1. Of all the hundreds of thanksgiving days observed in New England in the seventeenth century, only one church record in 1636 suggests the possibility of a feast. No further references to thanksgiving feasting over the next 150 years have been located.
2. During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress declared 18 December 1777 a day of thanksgiving in honor of the American military victory at Saratoga.
3. The driving force behind making Thanksgiving a national holiday was writer Sarah Josepha Hale. She believed that Thanksgiving Day could pull the United States together while sectional differences, economic self-interest, and slavery were pulling the nation apart. Hale was among the first American women to have a novel published, and she was one of the first authors—male or female—to write a novel that addressed the problem of slavery. It is for her verse that Hale is remembered by many Americans; one of her poems was “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
4. Perhaps the most famous Thanksgiving poem was written by Lydia Maria Child , whose “The Boy’s Thanksgiving Song” is better known to most Americans by its first line, “Over the river and thro’ the wood.”
5. A few months after the North’s military victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving. Every president since has proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday. However, the first president to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation was George Washington, who did so at the direction of Congress on 3 October 1789. The few presidents who subsequently issued Thanksgiving proclamations commemorated particular events, such as President James Madison’s proclamation of celebration at the end of the War of 1812. Few presidents issued Thanksgiving proclamations thereafter.

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6. Two-course Thanksgiving meals were common in the nineteenth century. The first course consisted of roast turkey, chicken pie, ham, beef, sausage, and duck supplemented with sweet potatoes, yams, succotash, pickles, sweetbreads, turnips, and squash. The second course consisted of pies, tarts, puddings, creams, custards, jellies, floating islands, nuts, and dried fruit. Wine, rum, brandy, eggnog, punch, coffee, and tea were served with the meal.


Source: NYPL.

7. In 1835 William Alcott , a physician, wrote that he was opposed to the feast on moral grounds as well as for medical reasons. He called the Thanksgiving holiday a carnival loaded with luxuries. Alcott had another reason for opposing the Thanksgiving dinner—he had become a vegetarian in 1830 and later was one of the founders of the American Vegetarian Society. Although few Americans paid attention to Alcott or other vegetarians at the time, vegetarian concerns re-emerged at the end of the century.
8. The rapid adoption of the Pilgrim-Thanksgiving myth had less to do with historical fact and more to do with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States. Because the immigrants came from many lands, the American public education system attempted to create a common American heritage. One curricular need was to create an easily understood history of America. The Pilgrims were an ideal symbol for America’s beginning, so they became embedded in the nation’s schools, as did the Thanksgiving feast.




9. A Puritan thanksgiving was a solemn religious day celebrated with attendance at church and prayer to God.
10. Although pumpkins are of New World origin, the first recipes for pumpkin pie appeared in British cookbooks. From the earliest records pumpkin and other sweet pies were part of Thanksgiving festivities.

The second edition of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America thoroughly updates the original, award-winning title, while capturing the shifting American perspective on food and ensuring that this title is the most authoritative, current reference work on American cuisine. Editor Andrew F. Smith teaches culinary hist ory and professional food writing at The New School University in Manhattan. He serves as a consultant to several food television productions (airing on the History Channel and the Food Network), and is the General Editor for the University of Illinois Press’ Food Series. He has written several books on food, including The Tomato in America, Pure Ketchup, and Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America.The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink is also available on Oxford Reference.

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In a series of videos, Corvino explores issues such as: Why marriage? (Why not civil unions?) Is gay marriage a threat to religious freedom? Is homosexuality unnatural? Are people who oppose gay marriage bigots?

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Watch the full playlist of videos where John Corvino answers common questions about marriage equality and homosexuality.

John Corvino, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. As “The Gay Moralist,” he was a regular columnist for the now-defunct 365gay.com, as well as a frequent contributor to pridesource.com, The Independent Gay Forum, and other online venues. He has contributed to dozens of books, and is currently completing a book entitled What’s Wrong with Homosexuality? for Oxford University Press. An award-winning teacher, he has lectured at over 200 campuses on issues of sexuality, ethics, and marriage. Some of his writing and video clips of his lectures are available at www.johncorvino.com. John Corvino and Maggie Gallagher are the authors of Debating Same-Sex Marriage.

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Patricia Prijatel, a nationally published magazine writer and an award-winning teacher, was diagnosed with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) in 2006. The journalist did what any reporter would do when diagnosed; she started investigating the disease, how it occurs, how it’s treated, and how to keep it from recurring. She found a noticeable lack of resources on the TNBC, a disease that differs from hormone-positive breast cancer from the initial prognosis to the treatment options. Patricia is now in remission, but along the way she has poured her heart into creating Surviving Triple Negative Breast Cancer: Hope, Treatment, and Recovery.

We spoke with Patricia Prijatel for insight into her own experience with TNBC, health advice for those battling the disease, and the importance of maintaining hope throughout the fight.

On her diagnosis

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On the importance of hope

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On diet and exercise

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Patricia Prijatel is author of Surviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, published by Oxford University Press. She is the E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor Emerita of Journalism at Drake University. She is doing a webcast with the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation on 16 October 2012. Read her previous blog post: “Just what is triple-negative breast cancer?”

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What does the extraordinary story of Tutankhamun tells us about the mummy’s curse?

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To what extent did the story of Tutankhamun become a media event?

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What does the curse of a Victorian gentleman have to do with Arthur Conan-Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles?

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Roger Luckhurst explains why he explored the mummy’s curse and why we are still so interested in the myths of Tutankhamun.

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Roger Luckhurst has written and broadcast widely on popular culture, specialising in science fiction and the Gothic. He is interested in the odd spaces between science and popular supernatural beliefs. He has previously written a history of how the notion of ‘telepathy’ emerged in the late Victorian period, and has published editions of Jekyll and Hyde and Dracula. He is also a regular radio reviewer of terrible science fiction films. He teaches horror and the occasional respectable novel by Henry James at Birkbeck College, University of London. The Mummy’s Curse: The true history of a dark fantasy  publishes in late 2012. Read his article on Downton Abbey and the Curse of King Tut.

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Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, examines the history of nationalism, America’s unique brand of nationalism with its varying positive and pejorative labelling, and the growing gulf between American citizens.

Nationalism and contemporary America

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The American Right, religion, and the Constitution

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Anatol Lieven is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. His books include America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism; Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power; and The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Path to Independence, which was a New York Times Notable Book for 1993.

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Bob Chilcott has been involved with choral music all his life, first as a Chorister and then a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. Later, he sang and composed music for 12 years with the King’s Singers. His experiences with that group, his passionate commitment to young and amateur choirs, and his profound belief that music can unite people, have inspired him both to compose full-time and, through proactive workshopping, to promote choral music worldwide. Two of his works featured in this video are: “Jesus, Springing” and “A Little Jazz Mass.” You can follow him on Twitter at @BobChilcott.

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Oxford Sheet Music is distributed in the USA by Peters Edition.

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We’re pleased to share the winning entries to Oxford University Press Australia and New Zealand’s annual film competition for law students. Now in its fifth year, the Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2012 was open to all students currently enrolled in an Australian law school.

To enter, students chose at least one definition from the Australian Law Dictionary and created a two-to-five minute film based around the definition/s to educate and help students connect with the law. The winners were those judged to be the most creative, instructive, and original.

Winner of the Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2012 : Bearly Legal
Julian Chant & Louis Aldred-Traynor (University of Melbourne and University of Notre Dame, Sydney)

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Second Prize in the Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2012 : You Better Watch Out
Jordan Tutton, Reuben White, James Trezise, Georgina Landon, Hannah Maccini, Cassie Byrnes & Jack Gillespie (Flinders University)

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Third Prize in the Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2012 : Snow Flake and the Huntsman
Louis Tang, Suet Yoong Leong, Yun Wei Wong & Ngoc Linh Pham (University of Adelaide)

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The judges also selected three commendable films. All the students involved have won an OUP book voucher.

Puff Daddy
Ross Paull (University of New South Wales)

Marriage
Skye O’Dwyer, Jordan Sanderson, Scott Leary, Anneka Frayne, Ashleigh Schiemer, Peter Martin, Erin Garty, Kate Simpson, Peta Lisle & Savanna Stewart (University of New England)

Will of Fortune
Elly Brand, Allana Neumann & Gerard Forrest (University of Queensland)

The Australian Law Dictionary is the best reference for those who want familiarity with, and knowledge of, Australian legal terms. Designed in response to research, the ALD is structured to ensure comprehensive coverage of core legal content. Readers are encouraged to learn the meaning of a particular term, link it with any related concepts, and locate it within the larger body of law. it is the winner of the Australian Educational Publishing Award for Tertiary (Wholly Australian) Teaching and Learning 2010. Trisha Mann, the editor, has a BA and an LLB from the Australian National University, and a Graduate Diploma in editing and publishing from RMIT, and in Managing Legal Organisations from the University of Melbourne. She is currently undertaking a PhD in judicial education at the University of Melbourne.

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