Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

March 2018

The eleventh hour: a look at the final battles of the Great War [timeline]

By Marissa Lynch

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Great War came to an end. Conventional accounts of the war often allow these closing battles to be overshadowed by opening moves and earlier battles. However, the human costs behind the Allied victory cannot be truly understood without examining the summer of 1918. Using personal accounts featured in The Last Battle, the timeline below captures the final battles of World War I through the eyes of the men fighting them.

Editing Arthur Machen

By Aaron Worth

f the challenges Arthur Machen presents to an editor, two, in particular, have shadowed me during the preparation of this new collection of his stories. The first is simply the special sense of responsibility one feels when curating the work of a deeply loved writer—for even when Machen’s reputation has been at low ebb (as, often enough, it has been), he has always had a hard core of devoted admirers.

Corporate governance from a federal law perspective

By Marc I. Steinberg

Traditionally, American states have regulated the sphere of corporate governance, encompassing the relations among and between a corporation, its directors, its officers, and its stockholders. With respect to publicly-held companies, Delaware, known as the jurisdiction with an expert judiciary in company law, sound precedent and legislative flexibility, reigns supreme as the state where the greatest number of such enterprises incorporate.

Italian election reflects voters unhappiness with current economy

By Andrea Lorenzo Capussela

On 4 March Italians surprised pollsters and observers. They awarded most votes to the centre-right coalition, as predicted, but within it they preferred the conservative League, which quadrupled its votes, to Silvio Berlusconi’s party and its post-fascist allies. Voters punished the Democratic Party (PD), which dominated the past parliament, more harshly than expected. And they rewarded the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (5SM) far more than expected.

“Watermelon snow” on glaciers: sustaining life in colour

By Roman Dial

Glacier surfaces around the world often host active communities of specialized organisms, including annelids in Alaska , insects in the Himalayas, and rotifers in Iceland. But these organisms, like all life, need liquid water in order to survive. The most strikingly visible signs of life on glaciers come from the microbes responsible for “watermelon-snow” – so-called both for its colour, and its smell.

The Quotable Guide to Punctuation quiz

By Stephen Spector

Correct punctuation is vital for clear, accurate, and natural writing. Anyone preparing a course assignment, applying for a job or for college admission, or doing any other formal writing needs to know the standard conventions of punctuation. Do you consider yourself a punctuation expert?

OUP Philosophy

What is it like for women in philosophy, and in academia as a whole?

By Catherine Pugh

During Women’s History Month, the OUP Philosophy team has been celebrating Women in Philosophy throughout history and in the present day. While it is easy for most of us to name male philosophers, it is far more difficult for people to name female philosophers even though their influence has been just as great as their male counterparts.

Shaping the legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders [excerpt]

By David Clark

She arrived in 1938, at age twenty-one, for the Michaelmas term. In that year, there were 850 women studying at the University, making up a record 18.5% of the student body. Cicely elected to read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (P.P.E.). This programme of study had been established at Oxford in the 1920s as an alternative to ‘Greats’ or Classics. It was generally known as ‘Modern Greats’.

The secret of the Earth

By Roy Livermore

One of the questions currently keeping astrobiologists (the people who would like to study life on other planets if only they could find some) awake at night is, what is the crucial difference that allowed the emergence and evolution of life on Earth, while its neighbours remained sterile? In their violent youth, all the inner planets started out with so much surplus heat energy—from planetary accretion and radioactive decay—that their surfaces melted to form magma oceans hundreds or thousands of kilometres deep.

You’ve got internet!– connecting rural areas

By Peter F. Orazem and Younjun Kim

Twenty years ago, if you wanted internet access in many rural areas of America, you had to plug your computer into a phone line, listen to the dialing sound, and hope for the best. Today many people can easily join the cyber world at reliable speeds that few imagined decades ago. Although the percentage of people with broadband has increased, many in rural communities still lack broadband access and the accompanying benefits.

Ten fascinating facts about the Marshall Plan

By benn steil

In 1947, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s rise in Europe, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct Western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking confronted Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions.

Is Debussy an Impressionist?

By Eric Frederick Jensen

From the start, audiences liked Claude Debussy’s music. Critics, perplexed by its originality, were less enthusiastic. It seemed so non-traditional that they found it difficult to grasp, and a challenge to categorize. That’s what eventually led to the term Impressionism being applied to it. It became an easy way both to classify it and make it seem less unusual. Prior to linking Debussy to it, Impressionism was solely associated with the visual arts.

Addressing international law in action

By Jo Wojtkowski

The 112th American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (4-7 April 2018) will focus on the constitutive and often contentious nature of ‘International Law in Practice’. Practice not only reifies the law, but how it is understood, applied, and enforced in practice shapes its meaning and impacts the generation of future international rules.

Digging into the innards: “liver”

By Anatoly Liberman

Etymological bodybuilding is a never-ceasing process. The important thing is to know when to stop, and I’ll stop soon, but a few more exercises may be worth the trouble. Today’s post is about liver. What little can be said about this word has been said many times, so that an overview is all we’ll need. First, as usual, a prologue or, if you prefer, a posy of the ring.

History in 3 acts: a brief introduction to Ancient Greece [excerpt]

By Robin Waterfield

Ancient Greek history is conventionally broken down into three periods: Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. However, the language used to describe them highlights an oversight made by generations of historians. By dubbing one period of history as “Classical,” scholars imply that the other two periods are inferior, simplifying the Archaic age as a mere precursor to and the Hellenistic age as a lesser descendant of the Classical age.

Celebrating the first women Fellows of the Linnean Society of London

By Sandra Knapp

Diversity in science is in the news today as never before, and it is hard to imagine what it might have been like to be a woman scientist in 1900, knocking at the doors of learned societies requesting that women be granted the full advantages of Fellowship. It might seem trivial to us now, but in the past these societies were the primary arena in which discussions took place, contacts were made and science progressed.