Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The world is literally on fire; authoritarianism threatens multiple countries; racism and xenophobia are rampant; women’s and LGBTQ rights are under threat—why on earth would anyone spend time reading a 3,000-page novel by a man who’s been dead (exactly) a hundred years?
Possibly the most dangerous play William Shakespeare wrote was The Tragedie of Macbeth. The drama is packed with illegality: assassination of kings; prophecies about kings; supernatural women; and necromancy. To add to the danger, Shakespeare’s employer, King James, was a prickly patron of the performing arts and notorious for his sensitivity to slights, real and perceived. […]
Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice. David Silkenat’s Scars on the Land provides an environmental history of slavery in the American South from the colonial period to the Civil War.
“The Foxes of Harrow” (1946), a Southern historical romance by Black Irish-American author Frank Yerby (1916–1991), writes back to Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Although Yerby and Mitchell were both raised in Georgia during segregation by mothers of Irish descent, their socially assigned racial identities created divergent approaches to representing the pre- and post-Civil War South in their respective novels.
2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays, which has since acquired the status of a cultural touchstone.
Women’s history month raises issues of erasure and marginalization, authority and power which, sadly, are still relevant for women today. Much can be learnt from the experience of women in the past.
Marilyn Monroe attended the Oscars only once in 1951, before the Academy Awards were even televised. Ana de Armas is nominated for playing Monroe in Blonde this year, but Marilyn’s work as an actress is rarely given the recognition it deserves.
In the anniversary year marking 100 years since the publication of R. W. Chapman’s OUP edition of “The Novels of Jane Austen”, Kathryn Sutherland (Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts, OUP 2018) examines the call to reassess the contribution made to the edition by Chapman’s wife, Katharine Metcalfe.
Understanding brain basics can help us study and teach music with greater efficiency and confidence, thus giving us more freedom in performance to concentrate on communicating the emotional essence of the music.
Environmental history is one of the most innovative and important new approaches to history. Explore eight of our latest titles in environmental history.
From the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Elisabeth Leake walks us through how the past resembles the present 40 years on.
Scottish poetry produced in the long eighteenth century might strike you as at once familiar and unknown. Hundreds of poets, balladists, and songwriters born or raised in Scotland throughout the long eighteenth century need to find new readerships.
The Civil War is one of the seminal moments in US history. New research continues to illuminate how we understand both the events of the war and how its legacy continues to impact our modern world.
When Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Uncle Silas” appeared in 1864, its author was best known as the proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine and a writer of Irish historical novels. Yet, as advised by his publisher, Le Fanu had produced a work of fiction situated not in the Irish past but the English present.
Chaplains tend to fly below the radar with little attention outside of emergency situations. Their work has long been an important part of the care religious leaders provide across the country.
The Grove Music Online spoof article contest is now open for 2023!