Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By William D. Romanowski
The 4th of December marks the 90th anniversary of the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923). A silent film, this was the first in a trilogy by the famed director that established the conventions for Bible-themed movies: religion, sex, violence, and cinematic spectacle (and not necessarily in that order).
By Matthew Flinders
Without a whistle or a bang from a starter’s gun, the 2015 general election campaign is now well under way. Labour’s proposed freeze on energy prices marks a first tentative attempt to seize the pre-election agenda, while the Chancellor’s autumn statement next month looks set to respond by including measures aimed at cutting the cost of living.
By Peter Knox and J.C. McKeown
Once upon a time, the Greek city of Cyrene on the coast of Libya grew prosperous through the export of silphium, a plant much used in cookery and medicine. But then the farmers learned that there was more money to be made through rearing goats.
By Jeannette D. Jones
There’s a legendary world in Deaf culture lore. It’s like Earth but it’s for people of the eye, so they call it Eyeth (get it? EARth, EYEth). In this world, people listen with their eyes with the comfort of being typical, just the way life is, unlike the existence of a Deaf person on Earth, heavily mediated through hearing devices, pads of paper, interpreters, lip reading, and gestures.
By Zaira Cattaneo and Marcos Nadal
Humans are apparently the only species to aesthetically enjoy the world around them. What is it that allows us to admire the elegance of a ballet dancer, or to enjoy the beauty of the sun’s reflection on the sea as it sets under the horizon?
By Philip H. Pfatteicher
The Christian Church, at its best, is remarkably honest. That characteristic is especially clear in the season of Advent, which calls Christians to look ahead toward the second coming of Christ the Lord of glory (what the New Testament calls his Appearing). In this expectation, the Church identifies with John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the first coming.
The Iliad was largely believed to belong to myth and legend until Heinrich Schliemann set out to prove the true history behind Homer’s epic poem and find the remnants of the Trojan War. The businessman turned archaeologist excavated a number of sites in Greece and Turkey, and caused an international sensation.
Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. His award-winning fiction has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and translated into over 30 languages.
This month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list celebrates St Andrew’s Day by highlighting some of the great Scottish classics we have in the series. From the gothic tale of Jekyll and Hyde to Burns, and the philosophy of David Hume, there is hopefully something for everyone here. But have we missed out your favourite?
By Judith Luna
Actually, editing classics is just what I don’t do. My job can be a bit of a mystery to people who wonder whether I rephrase the occasional Jane Austen sentence, or improve Virginia Woolf’s punctuation. Most days I am looking for living authors, not dead ones: the editors and translators who are responsible for the introductions and notes, and who actually do make decisions about how best to present the texts for modern readers.
Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi died 370 years ago today, so what better way to remember him than with the following fun facts.
We had a great time in Baltimore this past weekend at the 2013 American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference. In addition to searching for the best crab cake in Baltimore, one of our favorite parts was seeing our authors and having them show off their books.
By Norman Solomon
It started innocently enough at a lunch-time event with some friends at the Randolph Hotel in the centre of Oxford. ‘The trouble with Islam …’ began some self-opinioned pundit, and I knew where he was going.
With Thanksgiving as a time of the year to reflect on what brings us joy and …, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the music that we’re thankful for having in our lives.
By John Feather
From 1715 to 1758, Stephen and Zaccheus Richardson were successively the ‘Warehouse Keepers’ for Oxford University Press. The seemingly innocuous title conceals more than it reveals and yet is telling. In William Laud’s original vision of a university press at Oxford in the 1630s at the heart of the enterprise was to be an individual known as the ‘Architypographus’.
Earlier this month I collaborated with the Indonesian Embassy and the Smithsonian Institute to organize a four-day festival of Indonesian performing arts in Washington, DC. Hundreds of performers of gamelan descended on the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler galleries.