Arts & Humanities

Online editions in the classroom

By Lisa Rodensky
Every year I teach a research seminar for English majors at Wellesley College. One of those seminars — “The Victorian Novel: Text and Context” — makes literary research its topic. For this course, the students choose one Victorian novel and that novel is the focus of the papers they produce on biography, transmission, editions, sources, and reception. I also pick a novel (by an author that no other student has picked) and we work together on research questions related to that novel.

“I Hope They Don’t Think We’re a Rock ‘n’ Roll Outfit”: The Rolling Stones Debut, 12 July 1962

By Gordon Thompson
Fifty years ago, in one of London’s busiest shopping districts, the Rolling Stones stepped onto a stage for the first time, full of adolescent confidence and probably not a little performance anxiety. On this Thursday night, a crowd of friends and the curious came to support this muddle of middle-class English adolescents ambitiously exploring a relatively esoteric niche of American music. But everything about this first gig would portend a band that would be, a band that parents would hate and teens love, a band that would be ruthless in its pursuit of success.

Religion versus science…

By Matthew Bradley

Intellectual debates which command rock-star levels of mass appeal are rare, to say the least – but ‘religion versus science’ can still pull in the crowds like the best of the old stadium bands. It goes without saying that an Oxford debate between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins in February this year was packed out on the day, but it’s now also currently near 30,000 hits on YouTube.

Protestantism in Hollywood

Hollywood and Christianity often seem to be at war. There is a long list of movies that have attracted religious condemnation, from Gone with the Wind with its notorious “damn,” to The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. In his latest book, historian and award-winning commentator William Romanowski explores the complicated and remarkable relationship between Protestants and the American film industry. In it he reveals the surprising story of how mainline church leaders opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience.

Reflecting on 50 years of the Rolling Stones

By Alyssa Bender

This Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the debut performance of the Rolling Stones at London’s Marquee club on Thursday, 12 July 1962. After putting out their first single two years later, the Rolling Stones would go on to release over two dozen studio albums, over 100 singles, and numerous compilation and live albums. We asked some staff at Oxford for their favorite Rolling Stones songs and why they think they’re so great; read on for their answers.

The Arab Spring Needs a Season of Reconciliation

By Daniel Philpott
What is the meaning of justice in the wake of massive injustices? This question confronts the countries of the Arab Spring, just as it confronted tens of countries emerging from war and dictatorship over the past generation. How the Arab Spring countries address the evils of yesterday affects their prospects for peace and democracy tomorrow. Today only Tunisia is reasonably stable.

The Crowd in the Capuchin Church

Today in 1775, Matthew Lewis, author of The Monk, was born. Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt.

The Meaning of the Codex Calixtinus, Then and Now

By Susan Boynton

The temporary disappearance of the Codex Calixtinus was devastating to scholars and the general public alike because of its historical significance and special status as a symbolic object representing an important component of Spain´s national identity. This monumental collection of texts, images, and music relating to the cult of Saint James the greater in Santiago de Compostela is the most eloquent testimony (besides the Cathedral of Santiago itself) to the process by which James of Zebedee came to be revered as the Apostle of Spain.

Hitting the trail while wearing red, white, and blue

By Michael Otto
This summer, nonfiction reading lists are replete with voices from the battlefield. On bestseller lists, accounts from World War II are only a few steps away from inside perspectives on today’s Seal Teams. And regardless of the theater of battle or the decade of conflict, one cannot turn the final pages of these books without a deep appreciation of the value of team for those in conflict. The fighting unit, the organizational basis by which men and women at war live their daily lives, inspires tremendous loyalty — appropriate to the life and death contingencies members of the team face together. In battle, being a strong team member can save your life as well as the lives of those around you.

A New ‘Modern Prometheus’?

By Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens
Early in Ridley Scott’s science fiction (SF) film Prometheus, archaeologists discover a cave-painting of what seems to be a human figure pointing at a group of stars. Having gathered strikingly similar images from ancient and prehistoric cultures around the globe, the archaeologists take this most recent discovery as confirming their theory about the origin of humankind: we were placed here, created, by extraterrestrials. The archaeologists refer to those extraterrestrials as ‘Engineers’ (“What did they engineer?” asks another character. “They engineered us.”).

Edmund Spenser: ‘Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet?’

Edmund Spenser’s innovative poetic works have a central place in the canon of English literature. Yet he is remembered as a morally flawed, self-interested sycophant; complicit in England’s ruthless colonisation of Ireland; in Karl Marx’s words, ‘Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet’– a man on the make who aspired to be at court and who was prepared to exploit the Irish to get what he wanted.

Alice in Wonderland in Psychiatry and Medicine

By Susan Bélanger and Edward Shorter
Written by Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published on 4 July 1865. The book has remained in print ever since, becoming one of the most popular and influential works in all of literature. Alice has been translated into nearly a hundred languages, appeared in countless stage and screen adaptations, and continues to resonate throughout both academia and popular culture.

Living Anthems

By Mark Clague
The Fourth of July, aka “Independence Day” (the annual federal holiday in the United States marking the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain), is cause for national celebration and certainly the celebration of nationalism. Fireworks, orchestral concerts, parades, 5-K runs, carnivals, family picnics, and political speeches are common holiday happenings. Many are accompanied by music, especially by a haphazard class of folk tunes known as patriotic song that often defy historical logic, but nevertheless have become potent cultural symbols.

The transformation of listening with the Walkman

By Amanda Krause
Not long ago, I saw an image floating around the Internet. It simply displayed two items — a cassette tape and a pencil — along with the following statement: “our children will never know the link between the two.” Upon a quick search to locate that image the other day, it looks like it was the topic of a reddit post back in 2011. But as viral things tend to do, it lingered, making its way into Facebook posts and into Internet “age tests” aimed at prompting either confusion or nostalgic reflection.

Tyson vs. Holyfield and the infamous ear-biting incident

By Donald W. Black, M.D.
Today is the 15th anniversary of one of the oddest episodes in the annals of sports: Mike Tyson bit the ear of Evander Holyfield in the third round of a heavyweight rematch, which led to his being disqualified from the match.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau at 300

By Russell Goulbourne
Thursday 28 June 2012 marks the tercentenary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most important and influential philosophers of the European Enlightenment. The anniversary is being marked by a whole host of commemorative events, including an international conference at my own institution, the University of Leeds, which begins today. Rousseau arouses this kind of interest because his theories of the social contract, inequality, liberty, democracy and education have an undeniably enduring significance and relevance. He is also remembered as a profoundly self-conscious thinker, author of the autobiographical Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker.