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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Scholars continue to explore the role of sexuality in private lives—from the retrospective discovery of transgendered people in historical archives to present questions of identity and representation in social media—with the understanding that those who identify as LGBTQ+ have always existed and have fought tirelessly to advance their rights.
Europe’s soaring inflation and energy prices highlight the need to measure poverty and policy responses in non-monetary ways.
The democratic world is struggling to find political leadership. On the conservative side of the spectrum, the parties of the center-right have watched their constituencies fade and their political role be supplanted by a populist upsurge. On the left of the spectrum, the picture is no rosier.
Writers often worry that someone will scoop them before they finish, or an unexpected event will undo years of research and writing. Two weeks after naturalist Rachel Carson published her first book, Under the Sea Wind, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Despite excellent reviews, the book sold fewer than a thousand copies. The COVID-19 pandemic became my […]
Luis Moreno Ocampo provides a unique perspective on the International Criminal Court and its interaction with the War on Terror.
The historical evolution of peace has led to the development of a substantial International Peace Architecture (IPA). However, the IPA’s historical development has overall been very slow, hidden, and fraught.
Women’s history in sports has in fact been a long series of shocks that have reshaped the world of athletics as well as the possibilities that exist for women everywhere. In episode 80 of The Oxford Comment, we discussed tennis greats Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King and the legacies for women in sports with scholars Ashley Brown and Susan Ware.
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.
Amid the current economic crises, how do we recover? How can we address such financial distress and inequity, and how might we go about enacting more permanent resolution? Listen to Christopher Howard and Tom Malleson on The Oxford Comment podcast.
Here are six books from 2022 that reviewers and critics loved that you should add to your 2023 reading list.
We must re-envision our thinking about China’s rise and its role in the world in terms of two newer issue areas, sustainability and emerging technology.
European state-formation would have looked very different if rulers did not constantly have to negotiate with a strong clergy, independent townsmen, and the nobility over, inter alia, the wherewithal for warfare, succession and public peace. But the medieval Church shaped European societies in other ways than this. It was the one institution of late antiquity that survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, and it carried the torch of the Roman world after the Empire collapsed.
One week before the 2022 US midterm elections, President Joseph Biden delivered a prime-time address at Union Station in Washington, DC. Biden suggested that something foundational, fundamental, was at stake. He reminded listeners of the definition of democracy.
Even before the extensive economic sanctions against Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was hard to browse the news without seeing reports of yet another imposition of sanctions by one country or another.
In this episode of The Oxford Comment, we speak with Brian Levack, Robert Faris, and Tom Nichols on the past, present, and future of institutional distrust, with a particular focus on the contentious 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.
The paradoxical combination of loud saber-rattling and cautious military strategy on both sides of the Ukraine war follows the new rules of conflict involving nuclear powers.