Explore environmental history in eight books [reading list]
Environmental history is one of the most innovative and important new approaches to history. Explore eight of our latest titles in environmental history.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: the past’s resemblance to the present
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.
After Burns: recovering Scottish poetry
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.
New perspectives on the American Civil War [reading list]
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.
The murky beginning of the verb begin
The Oxford Etymologist explores the unfinished story of the word “begin”.
Is Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas an Irish novel?
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.
Do nouns have tense?
English noun phrases have something called a “temporal interpretation.” That’s linguist-speak for how we understand their place in time relative to the tense of the verb.
The everyday work of chaplains: hidden around the edges
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.
Etymology gleanings for two winter months (2022-2023)
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist responds to questions from readers on word borrowing across Hebrew, Greek, and Germanic, plus a few new etymology ideas.
Mind the gap: the growth in economic inequality [podcast]
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.
Charity and solidarity! What responsibilities do nonprofits have towards Ukraine?
In a speech to the UN General Assembly in the fall of 2022, President Biden called on the UN to stand in solidarity with Ukraine. At least 1,000 companies have left Russia because of Putin’s brutal unprovoked war on Ukraine. Some companies left because of sanctions. Others left for moral reasons, often under pressure from investors, consumers, and out of […]
A Q&A with Bryan Garner, “the least stuffy grammarian around”
The fifth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage has recently been published by OUP. I was happy to talk to Bryan Garner—who was declared a “genius” by the late David Foster Wallace—about what it means to write a usage dictionary.
“A tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”: Shakespeare under attack
Around three years into his career as a dramatist, Shakespeare’s blank verse—his unrhymed iambic pentameter—came under attack. We might wonder whether the passage from “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” was right?
Gr-words as mushrooms
Some words propagate like mushrooms: no roots but a sizable crowd of upstarts calling themselves relatives. Gr-words are the pet subject of all works on sound imitation and sound symbolism.
America’s first feminist ballet: Ruth Page and American Pattern
As that rare creature—an American woman who, defining herself as a choreographer and ballet director, amassed a degree of power and prestige and exerted aesthetic prerogatives—Ruth Page’s life and work offer refreshing paradigms for the twenty-first century.
Life of a Contrarian Writer: James Purdy’s life-changing correspondences [excerpt]
The American author James Purdy has long been considered a “lost” figure in literary studies, but he has always enjoyed a certain cult following among artists and writers interested in the fringes of society. Michael Snyder details how Purdy began making the connections that would carry him through his career.