Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Alyn Shipton
(1) Harry nearly had no career at all after he accepted a dare as a teenager to slide down a fast running flume at Wofford Heights in California. After sliding down the waterway for several miles at high speed he narrowly escaped with his life by grabbing a metal bar above his head and hauling himself out of the rapid current.
I would love to visit Africa someday. I think it would settle a lot of curiosity I have about the world. For now, my most informed experience regarding the place is a seminar I took this past semester, called Sacred and Secular African American Musics.
Compiled by Natasha Zaman
It’s finally summer — the perfect time to spend with family and friends, enjoy the weather, gardens and parks, and to create fond memories. What better way to create those summer memories than have our favorite songs playing in the background?
After a long wait, the royal baby has arrived. To honor the occasion, congratulate the Duchess of Cambridge, and welcome the new baby, we at Oxford University Press (OUP) have arranged a birthday gift: a compilation of classic lullabies from some of the different regions around the globe where OUP has offices.
To be frank, there has never been much love for the viola (or violists). As an erstwhile violist I would get two types of reactions about my instrument of choice: from non-musicians, “what’s a viola?” and from musicians… well just Google “viola jokes” and it will return some real doozies.
By Carolyne Larrington
In his masterpiece, Wagner synthesised stories from across the Old Norse – Icelandic collection of poems known as the Poetic Edda. He had long been mulling over an opera based on the German epic, Das Nibelungenlied, but he realised that he needed more material and more inspiration. Wagner knew where he might find it: “I must study these Old Norse eddic poems of yours; they are far more profound than our medieval poems”, he remarked to the Danish composer Niels Gade in 1846.
By David Blackwell
A popular form of aristocratic entertainment in mid-18th-century London was to stroll round the city’s ornamental pleasure gardens, both those at Vauxhall (launched in 1732 with a masked gala) and its more fashionable rival, Ranelagh Gardens (opened in 1742 and now the site of the annual Chelsea Flower Show).
Not only does Will and Kate’s royal wee one now have an ASDA parking spot, there’s another nice surprise awaiting his or her arrival: a specially-composed lullaby, called “Sleep On”. It’s a sweet little tune, written by Welsh composer Paul Mealor.
Britons know that when the sun shines you need to take advantage of it! With so many fantastic events spanning the summer months, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the British summertime. Come rain or shine, this Who’s Who quiz for British summer events is sure to keep your summer bright.
The Jesus People movement emerged in the 1960s within the hippie counterculture as the Flower Children rubbed shoulders with America’s pervasive evangelical subculture. While the first major pockets of the movement appeared in California, smaller groups of “Jesus freaks” popped up—seemingly spontaneously—across the country in the late Sixties.
By Joel Sachs
Unidentified key players are the bane of biographers, who cannot resist the urge to tie all the knots. In my case, writing about the extraordinary life of the composer Henry Cowell, two people resisted identification, both of them connected with the sad story of Cowell’s imprisonment on a morals charge.
By Anatoly Liberman
The names of musical instruments constitute one of the most intriguing chapters in the science and pseudoscience of etymology. Many such names travel from land to land, and we are surprised when a word with romantic overtones reveals a prosaic origin. For example, lute is from Arabic (al’ud: the definite article followed by a word for “wood, timber”).
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the iconic hit featured on the Beatles’ much-celebrated 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is probably among one of the most mesmerizing and musically inventive Billboard-toppers of all time.
By Keith Johnston
Comedy is having a bit of a cultural moment. Everywhere you turn people seem to be writing seriously about comedians and the art of comedy. Tina Fey and Caitlin Moran are credited with setting the agenda for pop feminism, Marc Maron is hailed as a pioneer of new media journalism, Louis CK is mentioned in the same breath as Truffaut, and Tig Notaro is regarded as an “icon”…
By Sheryl Kaskowitz
Some of my friends hate “God Bless America.” They find it sentimental, old-fashioned, cheesy. They bristle at its over-the-top jingoism, at its exceptionalism that seems out of step with the globalism of the twenty-first century. They say it violates the separation of church and state. They associate it with Bush, or Reagan, or Nixon, with the boring, mainstream, un-groovy side of American culture.
June marks the end of a long season for professional basketball in the US—the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoff finals cap the end of a season that begins in October. American television broadcasts professional basketball games just as it does other major sports, and seeks to draw an audience for sports telecasts by dramatizing broadcasted games. To help draw audiences, many networks use dramatic theme music for the games.