Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Beginning the 26th of December, a globe-spanning group of millions of people of African descent will celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival of communitarian values created by scholar Maulana Karenga in 1966. The name of the festival is adapted from a Swahili phrase that refers to “the first fruits,” and is meant to recall ancient African harvest celebrations.
By Thorin Tritter
I had the pleasure of writing the chapter about Oxford University Press’s early operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for volume three of the new History of Oxford University Press. A photo editor added an early photograph of the first home to the Canadian branch as the cover image for my chapter. It is a photograph I have seen before, but to be honest, I had previously not looked at it very closely.
Alain-Fournier’s lyrical novel, The Lost Domain, captures the painful transition from adolescence to adulthood without sentimentality, and with heart-wrenching yearning. Romantic and fantastical, it is the story’s ultimate truthfulness about human experience that has captivated readers for a hundred years. The following is an extract from chapter 15 and describes the moment when Meaulnes sees Yvonne de Galais for the first time.
By Anatoly Liberman
At the end of December people are overwhelmed by calendar feelings: one more year has merged with history, and its successor promises new joys and woes (but thinking of future woes is bad taste). I usually keep multifarious scraps and cuttings to dispose of on the last Wednesday of the year: insoluble questions come and never go away.
Season’s Greetings from Oxford University Press! Here’s some holiday decorations from our different offices around the world, including a great book ‘Christmas tree’ from our Australian colleagues, some ‘green’ decorations in the South Africa branch (all hand made!), and some festive trimmings in Oxford and New York.
Some festive quotations courtesy of Oxford World’s Classics
By S. Subramanian
In one way or another, the question ‘How is India Doing?’ has been one of great interest down the decades, and not only from the mid-1980s when Amartya Sen wrote an article, with that title, in the New York Review of Books.
by Josephine Balmer
At a British Centre for Literary Translation Seminar held jointly with Northampton Library Services some years ago, one of the participating librarians recounted his first encounter with the vagaries of translation; having fallen in love with a black Penguin version of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot as a student, he had eagerly purchased a new version when it had recently been republished. But dipping in to the book, he quickly became perplexed.
Inspired by a chapter on policing by leading criminologists Jeffrey Fagan (Columbia University) and John McDonald (University of Pennsylvania), the editors of the recently published volume New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future, David Halle and Andrew A. Beveridge, along with Sydney Beveridge, take a closer look at the consequences of the recent New York mayoral race.
Compiled by Victoria Davis
It’s been a busy year at OUP Music! Before 2013 comes to a close, we thought we would take a look back at the highlights of another year gone by.
By Molly Andrews
“By reason and logic we die hourly, by imagination we live!” wrote W.B. Yeats, thus resurrecting an age-old dichotomy between our ability to make sense of the world around us and our ability to see beyond what meets the eye. A belief in this dualism informs much thinking on imagination, which is often pitted against what is real. Jean Paul Sartre had a different way of seeing things.
By Eun Yeom
Since we have spent the last several months examining the places which have made the biggest impact in recent years, we decided to take a look at some of the locations on Earth which humans have left behind.
We invited our authors and editors to share their picks for the best books in international law in 2013. Here are their choices.
By Maurizio Borghi and Stavroula Karapapa
After almost a decade of litigation, on 14 November the Southern District Court of New York has ruled on the class action Authors Guild v Google. Judge Chin, who had rejected in March 2011 the agreement proposing to settle the case, found that the activities carried out in the context of the Google Books project do not infringe copyright.
The American Historical Association’s 128th Annual Meeting is being held in Washington, D.C., 2-5 January 2014. For those of you attending, we’ve gathered advice about what to see and do in the Capital from author and DC resident Don Ritchie as well as members of Oxford University Press staff. And be sure to stop by Oxford’s booth #901-907.
Here we celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. From his early days as an activist, to his trial and imprisonment, to his presidency, this reading list covers all aspects of his life, and looks beyond the work he did to see how he influenced South Africa and the world.