Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
After a nice little afternoon in Central Park yesterday, I consulted the AIA Guide to New York City to read up on the history of the 840 acre playground (which, I learned, is larger than Monaco). I share with you now my gleanings on how the park came to be the funky hybrid of leisure and active sport it is today, as well as my own thoughts on why parks prove we all really aren’t that different.
By Ulinka Rublack
Unusually so, Bronzino depicted Morgante completely nude from the front and from behind. Later generations added vine-leaves, but these have now gone, while the owl Morgante carries on his shoulder has been cleaned up to startle us with its forthright gaze. The paintings lead us back into the world of the Renaissance, which closely linked the question of who we are to how we look.
By Patrick Wright
On 1 October 1954, Sir Hugh Casson, the urbane professor of interior design who had been director of architecture at the Festival of Britain, found himself standing by the Tiananmen Gate in the ancient and still walled city of Peking. In China to present a statement of friendship signed by nearly 700 British scientists and artists, he was watching a parade that the reporter James Cameron reckoned to be “the greatest show on earth”.
By Sharon Zukin
The world’s biggest cities often spawn disaster scenarios—those end-of-the-world, escape-from-New-York exaggerations of urban dystopia. Once limited to printed texts and paintings, visions of urban apocalypse have become ever more accessible in newspaper photographs, movies and video games. They form a collective urban imaginary, shaping the dark side of local identity and civic pride.
New York is especially attractive as a site of imagined disaster. Maybe it’s payback for the city’s hubris and chutzpah, or perhaps there’s something in the American character that yearns for and fears creative destruction. If there is a general hunger for destruction stories, it is fed by the knowledge that the cities we build are vulnerable.
By Justyna Zajac, Associate Publicist
New York City’s Fashion Week may have officially kicked off last Thursday, September 9th, but it was Fashion’s Night Out (Friday, Sept. 10th) that really seemed to launch festivities. Serving as a celebration of the industry and of anyone with an affinity for dress, FNO encouraged stores and boutiques to partake in one glorious garment party and gift clientele with a variety of freebies and fun. You could listen to DJs spin tunes and play foosball
By Alana Salguero, Grove Art Editorial Assistant
From van Gogh and his notorious left ear to Salvador Dalí with his legendary moustache, the art world boasts a colorful cast of characters whose unorthodox behavior has generated as much public interest as its artistic oeuvre. It appears that creativity often begets eccentricity (or vice versa, the age old chicken-and-egg conundrum), blurring the boundaries between art, performance, and life.
This week the world famous Edinburgh International Festival kicks off, beginning three weeks of the best the arts world has to offer. The Fringe Festival has already begun in earnest with countless alternative, weird, and wacky events happening all over the city. Later in August sees the Edinburgh International Book Festival and there will be several OUP authors giving talks over a fortnight, including David Crystal, Tariq Ramadan, Frank Close, Ian Glynn, and Robin Hanbury-Tenison.
Today marks the would-be 404th birthday of prolific Dutch painter/etcher Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, who was born in Leiden in 1606, and passed away in Amsterdam on October 4, 1669. Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston. Her most recent book is Portraits and Persons, and in the excerpt below, she considers Rembrandt’s many self-portraits, and speculates as to why he was so attracted to this art form.
Guardians, messengers, protectors… what are angels? In Angels: A History, David Albert Jones, Director of the Centre for Bioethics and Emerging Technologies at St Mary’s University College, explores the enduring power of angels over the human imagination. He argues that they teach us something about our own existence, whether or not we believe in theirs. In this excerpt from the book, Professor Jones talks about what different religious texts tells us about what angels look like.
Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Texas. Her new book, Portraits and Persons, shows that portraits have served two fundamental fuctions throughout the ages. Firstly, they preserve identity, bringing us closer to loved ones who are either absent or dear. And secondly, they tell us something about the subject being portrayed: not just external things, but also the subject’s emotions and inner state. In the excerpt below Freeland analyzes self-portraits, specifically the work of Frida Kahlo.
Samuel Zipp is Assistant Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies at Brown University, and author of Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. In this original post, Zipp moves beyond the well-known personalities of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, profiling another cast of characters who molded and shaped the city we know today. For fun facts, media bites, and more about the evolution of New York City, check out the Manhattan Projects Facebook page.
The forces of real estate development and rebranding campaigns are transforming urban landscapes around the world─and Sharon Zukin has seen much of it first hand. In the following podcast she explains what happens to the people when a city gains financial capital or decides to change its image. Zukin teaches sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, and is author of this year’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.
This month Oxford celebrated the publication of the newest edition of the landmark AIA Guide to New York City with a launch party in the largest architectural exhibit in the world─The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art. Where can you find an apartment for $50 in New York City? The ego of Robert Moses?
J. C. McKeown is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new book, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World’s Greatest Empire, is a collection carefully gleaned from the wide body of evidence left to us by the Romans themselves. Each fact or opinion highlights a curious feature of life in ancient Rome. Below we have excerpted some tidbits from the chapter on Roman toilets.
In honor of National Tap Dance Day (May 25) Oxford is celebrating with Constance Valis Hill, author of Tap Dancing America. In this excerpt Hill shares a contemporary tap dance scene full of rich choreography.
Joan Fitzgerald is Professor and Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University. Her new book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development, is a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development. Emerald Cities is very readable and Marco Trbovich of the Huffington Post wrote, “Fitzgerald combines the academic discipline of an urban planner with the rigors of shoe-leather journalism in crafting a book that documents where real progress is being made….” In the original post below Fitzgerald shares how she found the fine balance between “academic discipline” and “shoe-leather journalism”.
