Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Fancy a spot of ghost hunting? Try to ignore the hairy hand in the corner of your eye and curl up with M.R. James this Halloween. Darryl Jones, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James, provides an excellent guide to his strange imagination and menace. Join Jones in the Trinity College Dublin Library to discuss James’s life and work.
The debate over immigration policy is characterized by explosive rhetoric on both sides. Paul Collier, author of Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World, discusses why liberals and conservatives both need to reassess their positions, and how we must find a middle ground based on sound data and research.
As you begin your university course in economics, you’re probably wondering just how your studies will intersect with the world outside the classroom. In the following adapted excerpt from Foundations of Economics, author Andrew Gillespie highlights the importance of studying economics.
The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York brought together leading sociologists from around the world to discuss the field, focusing on “Interrogating Inequality.” Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor-in-Chief of Social Forces, was lucky enough to steal five sociologists 20 blocks south to Oxford’s New York office.
Earlier this year, Oxford University Press (OUP) published The Throne of Adulis by G.W. Bowersock, as part of Oxford’s Emblems of Antiquity Series, commissioned by the editor Stefan Vranka from the New York office. It was especially thrilling that Professor Bowersock agreed to write a volume, as it represents a homecoming of sorts for the noted classics scholar, who began his career with OUP in 1965 with the monograph Augustus and the Greek World.
From global climate change to “fracking,” energy-related issues have comprised a source of heated debate for American policymakers. Needless to say, assessing the economic and environmental consequences of certain developmental shifts is often fraught with difficulty, particularly when considering existing national and international frameworks.
Relations between the United States and Mexico, in spite of the two countries’ geographical proximity, are nothing but complex. While intimately linked, the negativity with which Mexico is regarded by American lawmakers and citizens has prevented the formation of a strong, bilateral alliance thus far.
Long before it was first spotted in 1820, Antarctica has captured imaginations, and the many quests undertaken to explore it never fail to be dramatic adventures. Although Antarctica has been and continues to be studied, many do not know the continent’s past and the challenges it will face in the coming decades.
An inscribed marble throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis offers us a rare window into the fateful events comprising what has come to be known as the “Red Sea Wars.”
If Abraham Lincoln can be credited for delivering America from the grip of Civil War-era secessionism, he stood on the shoulders of two presidential giants: the iconic 19th century visionary honored the same constitutional ideals of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.
Few could have imagined the elusive floral wonder retrieved in January 1837 from the heart of Guyana’s wildest jungles– and fewer still could have predicted the extent to which it would transform an entire continent’s cultural and aesthetic sensibilities.
By Elizabeth Kendall
A hundred years ago in the summer of 1913, nine-year-old George Balanchine, then Georgi Balanchivadze, spent the last moments of normal childhood — in the country, in the forest by a lake — before he was abruptly brought back to St. Petersburg.
Obesity is often framed by public health officials as an epidemic, leading to a virtually unequivocal understanding of fat as “bad.” What this framing does not take into account, however, are the increasingly negative consequences of categorizing people – particularly women – as overweight.
Was Henry VIII a “family man” so to speak? The notion seems vaguely ridiculous; by 1547, the philandering English monarch had laid claim to six wives, two of which he had executed, including the infamously-beheaded Anne Boleyn.
How did the “textbook” Senate of the 1950s — one of compromise and where people worked together to solve the problems America faced — transform into our current one of gridlock, lack of compromise, and partisan warfare? Sean Theriault, author of The Gingrich Senators: The Roots of Partisan Warfare in Congress, traces the roots of this transformation back to one group of senators, who started in the House of Representatives after 1978, which is when Gingrich joined.
For centuries, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have captivated scholars as some of the most magnificent – and last remaining – representations of classical antiquity. Of those seven, the Hanging Garden of Babylon has particularly intrigued scholars, due in large part to the ambiguity surrounding its physical construction, geographical location, and enduring architectural legacy.