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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
“You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards,” snapped President Trump at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, in a so-called negotiation at the Oval Office, broadcast globally on Friday, February 28, 2025.
As shocking as the Pearl Harbor attack had been for the Naval Academy Class of 1940, the sudden arrival of peace was nearly as disorienting. Most of the Forties, as they were known, were still only 27 years old, and the great adventure of their lives was now behind them.
Dive into ten remarkable books that illuminate the diverse and vibrant experiences of the LGBTQ+ community.
Few countries in the world have changed as dramatically as Spain has since the death of General Franco 50 years ago. Following his victory in a three-year civil war, Franco ruled as dictator for nearly four decades. His successor, King Juan Carlos, whose appointment by Franco in 1969 restored the Bourbon monarchy, abolished in 1931when […]
Benjamin Franklin left many anecdotes about his reading in his autobiography and other writings. Though he presents himself as an example of how reading can enrich a person’s life, he never really codified his personal reading as how-to advice, but that does not mean that I cannot do so.
It is a real honour—and more than a little daunting—to take over from Tim Whitmarsh as Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. The first edition of the Dictionary appeared more than three quarters of a century ago, in 1949, offering “an authoritative one-volume guide to all aspects of the ancient world.” A great deal has changed since, including, of course, how we view “the ancient world.”
We have recently published five new blog posts on Electronic Enlightenment. These blogs cover a range of insightful topics and will be linked through our Electronic Enlightenment announcement newsletter, offering fresh insights and valuable information to you. Each blog is crafted to enlighten and engage, providing you with information and discussions on the history of the Barham Family, Charles Bertram, William Stukeley, Phillis Wheatley Peters, and the history of slavery through the letters of well-known historical figures. Check out the excerpts below and read the full blog posts and more on Electronic Enlightenment.
May 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Elleke Boehmer’s seminal text Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, first published by OUP in 1995 with a second edition following a decade later. It remains a landmark publication in the field of colonial and postcolonial literature and beyond, read, studied, and taught the world over.
It’s a crisp summer morning, and I’ve just made the half hour walk from Sommerville, Massachusetts, to Harvard University. The grounds are majestic, as you’d expect, but everything is fragmented by iron fence railings (gates all locked or staffed by security) and garish white tents that have been installed for graduation festivities. I show my ID and make my way into the Houghton Library reading room where I’ll continue my research on craftwork for a project on queer modernist materialities. As a fan of the show Dickinson, which aired on Apple TV+ for three seasons from 2019-2021, I’ve asked to see the scrapbook set designer Marina Parker made for the archive. I’m fascinated by contemporary adaptations of literary pasts, and Parker’s scrapbook suggests how craft itself might be fundamental to those queer reworkings.
At his passing in 2015, President Barack Obama celebrated Andraé Crouch as the “leading pioneer of contemporary gospel music.” The Guardian UK newspaper’s obituary called him the “foremost gospel singer of his generation.” Ten years after his death, Andraé Crouch’s songs are still found in more hymnals—Black and white—than any African American composer, save Thomas Dorsey (and Dorsey had a 30-year head start!).
Even if you didn’t ‘read English’ at university yourself, you almost certainly know plenty of people who did, and more or less everyone has had to study English literature at school at some point or other. As a subject, ‘English’ (an adjective masquerading as a noun) has been central to educational arrangements in Britain for well over a century, seeming for much of that time to occupy a privileged place in the wider culture as well.
Sir Elton John is a living superlative, unequaled in music history in terms of global sales, awards, and career longevity. Here are ten tracks to kick off each chapter of On Elton John; each song prompts a story about Elton, each one is a window that offers a particular way of seeing him and his career.
Thinker statues form a fascinating, but little explored cultural theme. While we may be most familiar with Rodin’s thinker, thinker statues, both male and female, appear in many very diverse cultures. They include the pensive bodhisattvas of Korea and China, the pensive Christ statues of Eastern Europe, the thinker statues of Kazakhstan and Africa, as well as the female thinkers of the pre-Columbian Tumaco-La Tolita culture.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the lives and legacies of inspiring women throughout history that played path-breaking roles in shaping philosophy and literature. This reading list features five books that amplify the achievements of these women who were either overshadowed by men, or subject to hierarchical thinking.
In the 1950s and 1960s, actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) was one of the most famous women on earth, someone to put alongside Queen Elizabeth II and Jackie Kennedy. Her complex marital history, many health crises, and love affairs were the stuff of front page headlines. She was, by any standard, the personification of the larger-than-life celebrity movie star.
Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged?