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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

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The long, withdrawing roar of Matthew Arnold

By Jane Garnett
Matthew Arnold is probably now most recalled for one phrase, the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the Sea of Faith in his poem “Dover Beach” (first published in 1867), and for having written the lectures which were published serially and then in book form (1869) as Culture and Anarchy. Both are cited more than considered, and the nature of Arnold’s cultural project is often misunderstood.

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Celebrate National Library Week with OUP

Celebrate National Library Week with free access to the OED and Oxford Reference, available to everyone in North and South America through the 20th of April. Visit either site and use the special username and password to login and access everything the sites have to offer. Everyone will have access through the same login and no registration of any kind is required.

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Friday procrastination: Webby honoree edition

Thank you to our wonderful contributors, staff, and most of all readers. OUPblog is one of nine 2013 Webby honorees in the ‘Blog – Cultural’ category. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be alongside the New Yorker’s Page-Turner and Perez Hamilton. And further congratulations to the Oxford Islamic Studies Online team or their Religion & Spirituality Websites nomination and the Oxford Music Online team for their Best Writing (Editorial) honor.

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The challenges and rewards of biographical essays

By Susan Ware
One of the first things I did after being appointed general editor of the American National Biography was to assign myself an entry to write. I wanted to put myself in the shoes of my contributors and experience first-hand the challenge of the short biographical form.

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The other Salem witch trials

By Owen Davies
The history of American witchcraft is indelibly associated with Salem, Massachusetts, where in 1692 nineteen people were executed as witches after the accusations of two young girls sparked a wave of fear. The village of Salem, the centre of the events of 1692, is now the town of Danvers, with the focus of today’s witchcraft industry centred on Salem city. But there are numerous other Salems in America, born of the country’s religious heritage – Salem in Hebraic means “peace”. But forget colonial Salem for a moment, as on two occasions in America’s more recent past Salem was the scene of trials related to witchcraft.

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Woman – or Suffragette?

By Lynda Mugglestone
In 1903, the motto “Deeds not Words” was adopted by Emmeline Pankhurst as the slogan of the new Women’s Social and Political Union. This aimed above all to secure women the vote, but it marked a deliberate departure in the methods to be used. Over fifty years of peaceful campaigning had brought no change to women’s rights in this respect; drastic action was, Emmeline decided, now called for.

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Musical scores and female detectives of the 1940s

By Dr Catherine Haworth
The dangerous dames, fall-guy private eyes, and psychologically unstable heroes and villains who roam the streets of the 1940s crime film have often been linked with anxieties surrounding changing roles for men and women in the years around World War II. Although appearing less regularly, the evolution of the ‘working-girl’ detective character can also be connected with these shifts in gendered identity.

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March Madness: Atlas Edition – A champion!

Today’s the day! Either X or X will end March Madness with a victory, and we can all return to our normal television programming — although we hope intelligent madness continues. Since the 11th of March, Oxford University Press has been running March Madness: Atlas Edition based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition. Mexico and Indonesia met in the finals while Madagascar and Turkey competed for third place.

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Can a low-sodium diet endanger patients with heart problems?

A Q&A with Dr. Jean Sealey. Patients suffering from cardiovascular disease are treated with drugs known as a renin-angiotensin system (RAS) blockers, which have been proven to reduce mortality in large clinical trials of patients with hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes. Now, a new study published this week in the American Journal of Hypertension has shown that some such patients are concurrently salt depleted and may not benefit from the RAS blocking drugs; in fact, RAS blockers may endanger their health.

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The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

By Stuart Casey-Maslen
Derided by a number of major military powers when it was adopted, almost 16 years later the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is in pretty rude health. No fewer than 161 States have adhered to its provisions — the most recent being Poland in December 2012 – and few outside dare to use anti-personnel mines these days such is the stigmatisation of the weapon, even though a ban has not yet crystallised in customary law.

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The historical arc of tuberculosis prevention

By Graham Mooney
In Tijuana, Mexico, 43-year-old tuberculosis patient Maria Melero takes her daily medicines at home while her health worker watches on Skype. Thirteen thousand kilometers away in New Delhi, India, Vishnu Maya visits a neighborhood health center to take her TB meds. A counselor uses a laptop to record Maya’s fingerprint electronically. An SMS is then sent to a centralized control center to confirm that Maya has received today’s dose.

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Eating horse in austerity Britain

By Dr Mark Roodhouse
On 27 April 1942, the Bow Street magistrates convicted The Waldorf Hotel, London, its head chef, and a London horseflesh dealer for ignoring the regulations fixing the maximum price of horsemeat. The chef paid the dealer £6 10s for 78 lb of horsemeat, nearly double the official price of £3 18s. Two American journalists, staying at The Waldorf while reporting on the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, read the news with consternation.

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World Social Work Day: Against neoliberal social work?

By John Harris and Vicky White
Social workers around the world are being invited to celebrate World Social Work Day on 19 March under the banner “Promoting Social and Economic Equalities”, taken from the Global Agenda (2010). Such a call to arms is sorely needed in the face of the growing influence of neoliberalism on global social work, an influence manifested in marketisation, consumerisation, and managerialisation.

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Beware the Ides of March!

By Greg Woolf
Romans measured time in months but not in weeks. The Ides simply meant the middle day of a month and it functioned simply as a temporal navigation aid — one that looks clumsy to us. So one might make an appointment for two days before the Ides or for three days after the Kalends (the first day of the month) and so on.

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Fools and horses

By Dick Hobbs
The news that sections of the UK public may have been munching on horse, rather than beef, has prompted renditions of an all too familiar refrain from British politicians and their cohorts in the media. “Mafia gangs” and “mobsters” have apparently combined in an “international conspiracy” to doctor the rump of the British menu in the form of cheap frozen meals.

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Five women songwriters who helped shape the sound of jazz

The songwriting business offered few opportunities to women in the early 20th century.  And jazz bandleaders, despite their own experiences with discrimination, were hardly more tolerant of female talent. Although audiences expected the leading orchestras to showcase a ‘girl singer’, women were rarely allowed to serve in other capacities, either on the bandstand or writing arrangements and compositions.

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