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Introducing SHAPE: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part one)

By Julia Black and Sophie Goldsworthy

OUP is excited to support the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. SHAPE has been coined to enable us to clearly communicate the value that these disciplines bring to not only enriching the world in which we live, but also enhancing our understanding of it. In the first instalment this two-part Q&A, we spoke to Sophie Goldsworthy, Editorial and Content Strategy Director here at OUP, and Professor Julia Black CBE FCA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and President-elect of the British Academy, to find out more about SHAPE and what it means to them.

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Defending God in Sixteenth-Century India

Beyond polemics: debating God in early modern India

By Jonathan Duquette

The early modern period in India (roughly from 1550 to 1750) has been increasingly understood as a time of heightened religious self-awareness—the fertile soil from which Hinduism emerged as a unified world religion. Yet it was also a tumultuous period of intense rivalry across scholarly and religious communities.

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Zoological Journal

Darwin’s queer plots in The Descent of Man

By Ross Brooks

This year, LGBT+ History Month coincides with the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s momentous sexological work The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, originally published on 24 February 1871. The occasion prompts reflection on Darwin’s highly equivocal handling of sex variations in the natural world, including intersexualities (“hermaphroditism”), transformations of sex, and non-reproductive sexual behaviours.

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Darwin's Psychology

Darwin’s theory of agency: back to the future in evolutionary science?

By Ben Bradley

Was Darwin a one-trick pony? The scientists who most laud him typically cite just one of his ideas: natural selection. Do any know that his theory of evolution—like his take on psychology—was drawn from a comprehensive analysis of organisms as agents? This fact has long been eclipsed by the “gene’s-eye view” of adaptation which gained a strangle-hold over biology during the twentieth century—and hence over sociobiology and today’s “evolutionary” psychology.

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The Louvre and its environs

By Anatoly Liberman

What is the origin of the name Louvre? Dictionaries and websites say unanimously that the sought-for etymology is unknown or uncertain. Perhaps so, but we will see.

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Black History Month square

Ten empowering books to read in celebration of Black History Month

By Jo Wojtkowski

In observance of Black History Month, we are celebrating our prize-winning authors and empowering scholarship spanning a variety of topics across African American history, the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, and more. Explore our reading list and update your bookshelf with the most recent titles from these eminent authors.

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Live after gravity

Isaac Newton’s London life: a quiz

By Patricia Fara

Isaac Newton is known as the scientist who discovered gravity, but less well-known are the many years he spent in metropolitan London, and what precisely he got up to in that time…

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The skin of etymological teeth

By Anatoly Liberman

Is English “skin” related to Greek “skēnē”? The story of “skin” and some other words, partly synonymous with it, is worthy of attention.

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Shakespeare and East Asia

Five themes in Asian Shakespeare adaptations

By Alexa Alice Joubin

Since the 19th century, stage and film directors have mounted hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare drawn on East Asian motifs, and by the late 20th century, Shakespeare had become one of the most frequently performed playwrights in East Asia.

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Cultural Psychology

What role does culture play in shaping children’s school experiences?

By Robyn M. Holmes

With increasing migration and the movement of people in the 21st century, many children are attending school in formal settings where cultural norms and practices at home may conflict with those children encounter at school. This experience places children in the position of having to navigate two different social worlds—home and school. In this blog post, Professor Robyn M. Holmes explores three key areas of cultural impact on children’s school experiences: parental beliefs and socialization practices, teacher perceptions, and school curricula and children’s learning.

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Love Lives

The evolution of women’s love lives: a timeline

By Carol Dyhouse

Reaching from the middle of the twentieth century, when little girls dreamed of Prince Charming and Disney’s “Cinderella” graced movie screens, Carol Dyhouse charts the transformation of women’s love lives against radical social changes such as the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the acceleration of technological advancement, and improved access to contraception, bringing us up to the 2013 release of “Frozen.”

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