Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York brought together leading sociologists from around the world to discuss the field, focusing on “Interrogating Inequality.” Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor-in-Chief of Social Forces, was lucky enough to steal five sociologists 20 blocks south to Oxford’s New York office.
By John Knight
China is not only soon likely to have the largest economy in the world but it also has the most fascinating because of the challenges that it has successfully met and the challenges that lie ahead for this semi-industrialised economy.
By Hester Lees-Jefferies
Last month I sat in my favourite theatre, the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon, watching Michael Fentiman’s excellent Royal Shakespeare Company production of Titus Andronicus. Titus is one of my favourite plays, loose and messy, blackly comic and oddly beautiful.
By Jim Baggott
Earlier today the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to English theorist Peter Higgs and Belgian François Englert, for their work on the ‘mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles’. This work first appeared in a series of research papers published in 1964.
As Grand Central Terminal celebrates its centennial this year, I have found myself admiring other accomplishments of the firm responsible for a significant part of its design, Warren & Wetmore. In my first days in the New York office of Oxford University Press, I noticed an imposing cadre of busts from the southeast windows of the building.
By Philippe Grandjean
This time of the year, parents worry about what the new school year will bring for their children, teachers complain about school budget constraints, and politicians express ambitions that at least 90% of all children complete basic schooling and 50% or more pursue college degrees.
We’re told many stories about the 1960s, typically clichéd tales of excess and revolution. But there’s more to the popular music of the 1960s. There are many ways in which rock music has shaped our ideas of individual freedom and collective belonging. Rock became a way for participants in American culture and counterculture to think about what it meant to be an American citizen, a world citizen, a citizen-consumer, or a citizen-soldier.
By Edward Zelinsky
Once again, those of us who depend on Metro North’s railroad commuter service found ourselves bereft of adequate transportation to travel to work in Manhattan. Once again, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA), which runs Metro North, urged us to avoid Manhattan by telecommuting from our homes for the duration of this service disruption.
Next week we launch our annual Place of the Year Contest (POTY), where we reflect back on the world’s hits and misses. Our panel of geography experts are hard at work compiling a list of places that have made an impact felt around the world in 2013. One place will be chosen as the winner. While they compile the most newsworthy locales, we wanted to reflect back on past years’ winners.
How do nations across the globe declare their intent in the formation of a new government? To celebrate the launch of the innovative, new platform Oxford Constitutions of the World, we have highlighted a broad range of preambles from several jurisdictions below and the full constitutions freely available on the Oxford Constitutions of the World site for a limited time.
By Ali Sparkes
You might think this is just Children’s Book Week but it’s also another significant week on the calendar. It’s National Spiders Come In Week.
According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, ‘habitat’ means the place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs. Tomorrow is World Habitat Day. The obvious question is, why do we need a day devoted just to habitat? The short answer is that loss of habitat is now the foremost conservation concern of the 21st century.
By Jamie Zibulsky
Today is World Teachers’ Day. What is World Teachers’ Day, you ask? It is “a day [first celebrated in 1994 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] devoted to appreciating, assessing, and improving the educators of the world.” This internationally recognized day commemorates teachers around the globe and their commitment to children and learning.
By Michael Gerhardt It is hard to imagine there is anything worth knowing about Chester Arthur. Many Americans might not even recognize that he was a president of the United States. By almost any measure, he is one of our most forgotten presidents: Never elected to the office in his office and a political hack […]
By Kandice Rawlings
Saint Francis of Assisi died on this day in 1226, and when he was canonized just two years later, the fourth of October became his feast day. Even before his sainthood was official, St Francis was a popular figure among the faithful, and the religious order he had founded already had chapters throughout Europe.
By Justin Gregg
Being an enormous, hulking beast has long been an effective defense mechanism. The plains and forests of North America were once teeming with colossal creatures like giant ground sloths and woolly mammoths, behemoths that plodded along safe in the knowledge that few predators would dare challenge them.