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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
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 […]
Problems emerge the moment we begin to explore the history of filch, because two homonymous verbs exist: filch “to attack” and filch “to steal.” They are almost certainly unrelated.
The addition to Electronic Enlightenment of nearly 500 letters from the Beaumarchais correspondence is a significant event in eighteenth-century studies.
Music composed for television had, until recently, never been taken seriously by scholars or critics. Catchy TV themes, often for popular weekly series, were fondly remembered but not considered much more culturally significant than commercial jingles.
In this interview, our Marketing Manager for philosophy, Hana Purslow, outlines OUP’s approach to subject marketing.
Three English words sound as rake: the garden instrument, the profligate, and a sailing term meaning “inclination from the perpendicular.” Though at first sight, they do not seem to be connected, I’ll try to show that their histories perhaps intertwine.
The idea that Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues entirely lacked the philosophical bite or intellectual depth of Plato’s had become a commonplace in a philosophical discourse which prioritised abstract knowledge over broader ethics. Dr Carol Atack makes the case for Xenophon’s kinder Socrates.
Learn 10 things about US immigration policy in the nineteenth century that give context to some of the immigration concerns we face in the US today.
At first sight, the origin of the verb “scratch” looks unproblematic… The Oxford Etymologist scratches beneath the surface of “scratch.”
A novel about a female composer struggling with depression after the birth of her child does not, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with war or peace in Northern Ireland. But appearances can be deceiving.
In a recent Animal Frontiers article, we look at the larger picture of sustainability and the conversation that needs to happen when thinking about just one facet of an industry.
Can local memory of an association between a place and the people who lived there be preserved for more than three centuries? Ken Dark looks at this question in reference to the “House of Jesus”, and whether it is plausible that the historical associations of a place—even a place in Nazareth—can be remembered 200 years on, let alone three centuries.
The realization started with the word akimbo. I had first learned it as meaning a stance with hands on the hips, and I associated the stance with the comic book image of Superman confronting evildoers. Body language experts sometimes call this a power pose, intended to project confidence or dominance.
The making of Façade “Poetry is more like a crystal globe, with Truth imprisoned in it, like a fly in amber. The poet is the magician who fashions the crystal globe. But the reader is the magician who can find in these scintillating flaws, or translucent depths, some new undiscovered land.” Osbert Sitwell, writing in 1921 […]
The Oxford Etymologist ruminates on the origins and meanings of idioms including “to go to hell in a handbasket.”