Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Marc Napolitano
Though music plays a significant role within Charles Dickens’s novels—as various characters’ personalities are defined by their fondness for song—music has also proven a central element of the larger legacy surrounding Dickens’s works. From the Victorian period onward, music has been used as a medium for the adaptation of Dickens’s texts.
Happy International Children’s Book Day! When their father goes away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis have to move with their mother from their London home to a cottage in the countryside. Thus begins E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children, the latest in our Oxford Children’s Classic series, which we’ve excerpted below.
Many of our readers will have first acquainted themselves with an Oxford World’s Classic as a child. In these videos, Peter Hunt, who was responsible for setting up the first course in children’s literature in the UK, reintroduces us to The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, and Treasure Island.
Think you know your country music? While “Crazy” was made famous by Patsy Cline, it was composed by Willie Nelson. And that brings us to Level 3: Crazy — the last stage in our three-part country music quiz, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Tonight is the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Are you ready?
Let’s test your knowledge from honky tonk to hillbilly blues. Here’s the second of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. You can still go back and take “Quiz on country media, Level 1: Walk the line.” All this is running up to the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st. Can you pass all three levels of our a country music knowledge challenge?
The 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st, so we thought it was time to pull together a country music knowledge challenge. Compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music — we begin the first of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents today. How much do you know about the music of “three chords and the truth”?
By Desmond Clarke
When searchable editions of classic philosophical texts became available in the 1980s, one proud publisher advertised the benefits of this new technology at an APA meeting by inviting participants to do a sample search of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding.
By Tamara Sonn
For many people, the term shariʿah sets off alarm bells. Visions of court-ordered amputations and stoning arise in the popular imagination. Commentators point out that the European Court of Human Rights has pronounced some components of shariʿah, particularly those dealing with pluralism and public freedoms, incompatible with fundamental principles of democracy. And fears of “creeping shariʿah” have inspired hundreds of Web sites warning that Muslim fanatics intend to reestablish the caliphate and bring the entire world under Islam’s harsh legal system.
By Duncan Calow
It is only March, but 2012 has already seen a series of contract disputes over digital media and technology hit the headlines, with cases filed by Peter Frampton, HarperCollins, and new media company Phonedog.com
We’re celebrating World Theatre Day with an excerpt from Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece The Phantom of the Opera. A mysterious Phantom haunts the depths of the Paris Opera House where he has fallen passionately in love with the beautiful singer Christine Daaé. Under his guidance her singing rises to new heights and she is triumphantly acclaimed. […]
By Jason Rosenhouse
In May 2000 I began a post-doctoral position in the Mathematics Department at Kansas State University. Shortly after I arrived I learned of a conference for homeschoolers to be held in Wichita, the state’s largest city. Since that was a short drive from my home, and since anything related to public education in Kansas had relevance to my new job, I decided, on a whim, to attend.
With the season premiere of AMC’s Mad Men coming this weekend, we thought we’d use this opportunity to introduce you to one of the most highly respected scientists in the field of Persuasion. As a matter of fact, many people consider Dr. Robert Cialdini as the “Godfather of influence”. What better way to do that then provide you with the foreword he wrote to a just-released book, Six Degrees of Social Influence. Enjoy his words below and enjoy the premiere.
This Day in World History
On March 23, 1743, composer George Frideric Handel directed the first London performance of his sacred oratorio, Messiah. While the composition has become revered as a magnificent choral work—and a staple of the Christmas holiday season—it met some controversy when it first appeared.
By Richard Marggraf Turley, Jayne Elisabeth Archer and Howard Thomas
“What if the field in Keats’s ode was (cue drum roll), not an allegorical field, not a cipher for, say, St Peter’s Field in Manchester (the location of the Peterloo Massacre), nor a mythic site of bucolic languor, but an actual Winchester field …
By Adam Branch
From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter. I don’t watch YouTube and the Ugandan papers didn’t pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the US about the video by Invisible Children and the massive online response to it.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Let’s take a look at a part of Ireland’s history since 1759 — the brewing of Guinness. Now raise a pint of Dublin’s own Guinness to our fellow Irishmen and women. The following article is Brian Glover’s entry on Guinness in the Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver.