Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
When Luc Besson finished filming The Lady in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from being under house arrest since 1989. He visited her at her home in Yagoon with a dvd of his film as a gift. She smiled and thanked him, responding, “I have shown courage in my life, but I do not have enough courage to watch a film about myself.”
It was late in the day when a nondescript package arrived at my office. After carefully opening the box and lifting off the lid, there it was: Google Glass. And yes, it was awesome. Initially, the technology geek in me was overjoyed, but the oral historian soon took over as I raced through potential uses for this wearable technology in my daily work.
By John Cherrie
Each year there are 1,800 people killed on the roads in Britain, but over the same period there are around four times as many deaths from cancers that were caused by hazardous agents at work, and many more cases of occupational cancer where the person is cured. There are similar statistics on workplace cancer from most countries; this is a global problem.
For many years, scholarship on composer Gustav Mahler’s life and work has relied heavily on Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s diary. However, a recently discovered letter, introduced, translated, and annotated by Morten Solvik and Stephen E. Hefling, and published for the first time in the journal The Musical Quarterly, sheds new light on the private life of the great composer.
The powerful biographical film, Hannah Arendt, focuses on Arendt’s historical coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s trial in 1961 and the genocide of six million Jews. But sharing center stage is Arendt’s philosophical concept: what is thinking?
By Rachael A. Bay
For tigers, visiting your neighbor is just not as easy as it used to be. Centuries ago, tigers roamed freely across the landscape from India to Indonesia and even as far north as Russia. Today, tigers inhabit is just 7% of that historical range. And that 7% is distributed in tiny patches across thousands of kilometers.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
This summer, our editor-in-chief Kathy Nasstrom is taking a well-deserved break, and leaving the Oral History Review and related cat-herding in the hands of the extremely capable Stephanie Gilmore. As some may have read in the Oral History Association’s most recent newsletter, Stephanie is a multitalented historian who works to combat sexual assault on university campuses.
Khalid Koser
There seems to be an international day for almost every issue these days, and today, 20 June, is the turn of refugees. When the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) releases its annual statistics on refugees today, these are likely to make for gloomy reading.
By Eve E. Garrow
Does the government fund nonprofit human service organizations that serve and locate in the neighborhoods with the greatest needs? This is an important question, as much of the safety net now takes the form of human services delivered, for the most part, by nonprofit organizations. Access to government benefits therefore relies increasingly on the location of nonprofits that are awarded government funds to provide human services.
American director, Joshua Oppenheimer, has merged theatre, psychology and film in his innovative documentary, The Act of Killing, Jagal in Indonesian, meaning Butcher. (BAFTA Award for Best Documentary of 2013.)
By Claudia Gabbioneta, Rajshree Prakash, and Royston Greenwood
Professional service firms have been implicated in numerous cases of corporate fraud. Enron is probably the most striking – albeit by no means the only – example of this involvement. Arthur Andersen (who audited Enron’s financial statements) was accused of helping the company ‘design accounting techniques or models’ that Enron used to boost its performance.
By Sascha-Dominik Bachmann
Russia’s offensive policy of territorial annexation (of the Crimea), the threat of using military force and the actual support of separatist groups on the territory of Ukraine has left the West and NATO practically helpless to respond. NATO seems to be unwilling to agree on a more robust response, thus revealing a political division among its member states.
By Corinne Reczek
The growing support for same-sex marriage rights represents an important shift in the everyday lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the United States today. However, the continued focus on same-sex marriage in the media, by states, and by local governments, and by scholars and researchers leaves other arenas of the family lives of gay and lesbian adults relatively unexplored.
By Gary E. Swan
According to the WHO’s fact sheet on tobacco, chronic tobacco use caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century. If current trends continue, it may cause one billion deaths in the 21st century. The global tobacco epidemic kills nearly 6 million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke.
By David Tarkhnishvili
Rapid development of molecular genetics in recent decades has revolutionized our understanding of life and the natural world. Scientists in the 1970s suggested that the grey wolf might be the sole ancestor of domestic dogs, but it was only in 1997 that Carles Vilà, Peter Savolainen, Robert Wayne, and their co-authors provided the conclusive evidence on this based on the analysis of molecular genetic markers.
On 25 April, we shared an excerpt from the conversation between OHR 41.1 contributor Alexander Freund and OHR board member Erin Jessee regarding Freund’s article, “Confessing Animals: Towards a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview”. Below, Freund and Jessee continue their exchange, tackling storytelling in non-Western arenas.