Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By David King Dunaway
In the late 1950s, Dave Van Ronk was walking through Washington Square Park in New York’s Greenwich Village on a Sunday afternoon. This Trotskyist-leaning jazz enthusiast from Queens thought the crowds huddled around guitars and banjos “irredeemably square.”
By Eldar Sarajlic
Public controversies over non-therapeutic infant circumcision have become frequent occurrences in our time. Recently, an Israeli religious court fined a mother of a one-year-old for refusing to circumcise her son. We all remember last year’s circumcision controversy in Germany.
By Simon Eliot
In 1901 it was calculated that Oxford University Press took in more than twice the tonnage of material that it sent out, much of the difference being accounted for by coal and machinery. The efficiency of coal was not a new concern in the printing industry. In 1880, Edward Pickard Hall, then responsible for printing Bibles at the Press, had compiled a list of the ‘Evaporative power of Different Coals’ in a notebook and had concluded that ‘Nixon’s Steam Navigation’ at 13.45 was distinctly more efficient than ‘Wyekam’ coal at 11.42.
By Phillip John Usher
British comedian Eddie Izzard — known for his Francophilia and for performing standup in French and in France — once made a quip during a show in New York that at first seemed rather Franco-sceptic: why, he asked, do we talk about the “Renaissance” using a word of French origin when France itself had no such moment of Re-birth?
By Tom Fisher and Nicolas P. Maffei
What attracts us to objects? Why does ‘bling’ catch our eye, albeit superficially? Why do we value the glow of patina? While all of our senses aid our first contact with material and form, arguably, it is the visual qualities of an object’s surface that first draws us in.
By Scott Huntington
Why should people bother to study music history or, for that matter, go on to major in it? What could you possibly gain from studying music history? The answer to these questions might surprise you.
By Daniel Donaghy
During the movie awards season, Steve McQueen’s new film 12 Years a Slave will inspire discussions about its realistic depiction of slavery’s atrocities (Henry Louis Gates Jr. has already called it, “most certainly one of the most vivid and authentic portrayals of slavery ever captured in a feature film.”) and the points at which the film most clearly reflects and departs from Solomon Northup’s original narrative.
By John Louth
One of the questions we are asked most frequently as university press editors is whether and how our work has changed to accommodate digital publishing. That can be taken to refer to a wide range of changes, but if we mean the digital publication of scholarly monographs, the answer, thankfully, is “not much”.
On the first day of class in my ‘Psychology of Music’ course, I often ask students to create their own musical instruments. The catch is… they have to make them out of whatever they happen to have in their backpacks and pockets that day!
The 5 December 2013 live broadcast of The Sound of Music became a ratings giant despite withering reviews from armchair critics everywhere. “Hate watchers” Twittered their derision with relish, while NBC laughed all the way to the bank. What was the draw?
By Elizabeth Knowles
Dictionary projects can famously, and sometimes fatally, overrun. In the nineteenth century especially, dictionaries for the more recondite foreign languages of past and present (from Coptic to Sanskrit) were compiled by independent scholars, enthusiasts who were ready to dedicate their lives to a particular project.
By D. Oliver Herbel
When most of us think of religious discussions surrounding Christmas, we likely think of debates about the “real meaning,” warnings against materialism, or to what extent the holiday is “pagan.” For Orthodox Christians, the question of when to celebrate Christmas is also a hot topic. This is especially the case in America.
As of 1 January 2014, 27 years have passed since the first edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music was published. In those 27 years, The Beatles sold 2 billion albums, Michael Jackson died, and Simon Cowell had the excellent foresight to create One Direction.
By Philip Pfatteicher
Some would say the Church has lost the battle over Christmas. Continued insistence that we “put Christ back into Christmas” is futile, and instead of wasting time on that campaign it would be much more useful to emphasize the original celebration of Christ’s coming into the world: the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th.
Today, Saturday the 4th of January, is National Trivia Day. We may employ a few competitive pub quiz champs in our offices, so we gathered together a few trivia questions from our resources to play a game. Why not bring these puzzlers to your next Trivia Night and let us know how it goes?
The 6th of November is Saxophone Day, a.k.a. the birthday of Adolphe Sax, which inspired us to think about instruments that take their name in some way from their inventors (sidenote: for the correct use of eponymous see this informative diatribe in the New York Times).