Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

May 2021

Reconstructing the Dreamland

100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre

By Randall Kennedy

On 1 June 1921, mobs comprised of ordinary white Oklahomans destroyed Greenwood, a black neighborhood in Tulsa sometimes referred to as “Little Africa.” The rioters proceeded to subject their African American neighbors to injury, murder, looting, pillaging, and arson. At least a hundred residents of Greenwood were killed while thirty-five city blocks were torched, destroying churches, businesses, and all sorts of other dwellings. The riot rendered more than a thousand families homeless.

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Nicotine & Tobacco Research

Success of Ontario menthol cigarette ban: more menthol smokers quit tobacco

By Michael Chaiton and Anasua Kundu

Recently, the (FDA has expressed intention of banning menthol among tobacco products—a move that could have enormous impact on health in US and in particular on reducing the disparity of health faced by Black Americans. The province of Ontario, Canada implemented a ban on menthol-flavoured tobacco products in January 2017, before a nation-wide menthol ban on October 2017.

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Love Letter

Finding music in the life and letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

By Sarah Dacey

I first became aware of the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay after composer Alison Willis set one of her poems (‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’) for Juice Vocal Ensemble, a group I co-founded with fellow singers and composers, Kerry Andrew and Anna Snow. The collection from which this particular poem is taken won Millay the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 and helped to further consolidate her blossoming career not only as a poet but also as a writer of plays and short stories, receiving mass-recognition under the pseudonym, Nancy Boyd.

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Charlie Brown's America

9 new books to explore our shared cultural history [reading list]

By OUP History

How did the Peanuts gang respond to–and shape–postwar American politics? How has a single game become a cultural touchstone for urban Chinese Americans in the 1930s, incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II, and Jewish American suburban mothers? Were 19th Century Brits very deeply bored? Cultural and social history bring to life the beliefs, understandings, and motivations of peoples throughout time. Explore these nine books to expand your understanding of who we are.

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Eric Partridge as an etymologist

By Anatoly Liberman

Eric Partridge is deservedly famous among word lovers. His main area of expertise was substandard English, that is, slang and cant. In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist offers a tribute to an indefatigable word hunter and a great expert in the field that interests many people.

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The SHAPE of things [podcast]

By Steven Filippi and Ella Percival

In January, Oxford University Press announced its support for SHAPE, a new collective name for the humanities, arts, and social sciences and an equivalent term to STEM. SHAPE stands for Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy and aims to underline the value that these disciplines bring to society. Over the last year or so, huge attention has—rightly—been placed on scientific and technological advancement but does that mean we’re overlooking the contribution of SHAPE in finding solutions to global issues?

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Socio-Economic Review

Cybervetting in hiring: the hunt for moral performances

By Amanda Damarin and Steve McDonald

In roughly 7 out of 10 workplaces in the US, HR professionals use cybervetting to get to “know a person” beyond information provided on a resume. But what are cybervetters really attempting to learn, what inferences do they make, and what does any of this have to do with how a candidate will perform on the job?

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OUP logo

Accessibility in academic publishing: more than just compliance

By Dwyer Scullion

If you’re lucky enough to be able to simply open a webpage and engage with the content hosted there, the likelihood is that you rarely think about what it would be like if you couldn’t do that. What if you were visually impaired but the page was indecipherable to your screen reader?

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The “Ready… Set… Go!” phrase structure in Classical Era music

By Donna Gunn

We all know the joyful anticipation of that exciting phrase. Whether getting ready for a “race” with my granddaughter or waiting for the gun at the start of a half-marathon, just the thought of it brings a bit of an adrenaline rush. This mindset transcends culture, space, and time, and presents itself structurally in Classical Era music.

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Fading signs of son preference

By Jan Kabatek

Son preference is a phenomenon that has strong historical roots in many western and non-western cultures. The positions of men and women in modern societies are becoming more aligned. In this context, it is natural to ask whether son preference is yet another social phenomenon that is losing its historical ground. Could it even be that in some domains of life such preference is already a thing of the past?

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The US Congress

The Senate’s unchanging rules

By Donald A. Ritchie

At his recent press conference, President Biden said that he came to the Senate 120 years ago. I knew exactly what he meant because I got there three years after him when I joined the Senate Historical Office in 1976, and it was a different world.

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