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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
When we walk into a restaurant, we are often confronted by the sight of people taking pictures of their food with their smartphones. Online, our Facebook feeds seem dominated by pictures of people’s hamburgers and desserts. What is going on with food porn? How is consumer desire itself transformed by contemporary technology?
On 27 April 1885, Alice Brereton (née Fairchild) returned to America with her family. The Aurania’s passenger list includes her British—born husband and their three children. From information contained in the list—name, age, citizenship, and occupation—we can reconstruct aspects of the family’s history revealed in other public documents.
A tense, volatile electoral season. Accusations of “voter fraud,” and real instances of thuggery on the campaign trail. Documented instances of real voter suppression due to newly instituted state policies attempting to restrict voting disproportionately by race. Real or implicit threats of violence against minority voters. Surging anti-immigrant and exclusionist sentiment, particularly against relative newcomers who practiced seemingly strange religions. Some might describe the recent electoral campaign that way, but I have in mind the election campaign of 1876.
Universal screening for breast and colorectal cancers are currently recommended as methods to reduce the mortality associated with these diseases. Mammography is capable of detecting cancer before it has the opportunity to invade into lymph nodes or other organs, and colonoscopy is able to not only detect early stage cancers, but by removing precancerous polyps, prevent cancer from developing.
“The development of behavioral economics is simply in the nature of scientific progress in economics.” Behavioral economics is a fast growing field within economics. We caught up with Sanjit Dhami to discover how he came to specialise in behavioral economics, how it has developed, and what he thinks is in store for the field in the future.
As the population of Britain and Ireland grows, some surnames are becoming even more common and widespread, alongside a steady continuation of uncommon surnames; but how many of us know anything about our family names’ origins – where it comes from, what it means today, and exactly how long it has actually been around for? Names derive from the diverse language and cultural movement of people who have settled in Britain and Ireland over history
The ultimate fate of the right to be forgotten remains to be seen. Although Europe has temporarily resolved this question in favor of the right by adopting its General Data Protection Regulation, many questions surrounding the issue still must be answered. It’s unclear whether other parts of the world will follow Europe’s lead. Internationally, writers are exploring some of these matters.
Corporations are now widely seen as having responsibilities in regard to human rights abuses. This was thrown starkly onto the front pages recently when a number of high profile UK companies, including M&S and Asos, were caught up in allegations of child refugees from Syria working in very poor conditions for clothing suppliers based in Turkey.
His syndrome was a variant of Capgras syndrome, where a patient develops the delusion that a family member has been replaced by an identical imposter. Knowing what to look for, I began finding more and more cases: a man with Alzheimer’s who believed his daughter was an imposter, a woman with a right frontal lobe stroke who believed her house was a replica of her real house.
Was the vote for “Brexit” an expression of nationalism? It depends what we mean by nationalism and what kind of nationalism is involved. I define nationalism as the belief that national identity provides the focus of political loyalty and is best expressed and secured through independence, usually a sovereign nation-state. . Nationalism consists of ideas, politics (movements, parties), or sentiments (beliefs, attitudes).
The Worcester joiner, John Read, appears to have been a regular customer of Thomas Dickenson, but two purchases stand out: on 25 December 1740 and again on 26 December 1741 he bought sugar plums and spices to the value of 5 shillings and 2 pence. Perhaps these were a special treat for his family, marking the festive season with small luxuries to relieve what was probably an otherwise rather unremarkable diet.
What do Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, and Hanan Al-Shaykh have in common?
In fiction, an unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is in doubt – in other words, a proper reading of a narrative with an unreliable narrator requires that the audience question the accuracy of the narrator’s representation of the story, and take seriously the idea that what actually happens in the story – what is fictionally true in the narrative – is different from what is being said or shown to them.
Notwithstanding a few near misses (the Austrian presidential election), many more liberally-minded readers will probably reflect back on 2016 as a year of loss and anxiety. Two significant shocks—Brexit and the election as US President of a reality TV star billionaire with neither political experience or knowledge—have severely dented our sense of the logical progression of our times.
To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, we brought you a new theme every month throughout 2016. From Women to Race and from Money to the Supernatural, we delved into complex subjects surrounding his life and works, exploring their relevance for a modern audience. With specially commissioned videos, articles, and interactive content from a host of Shakespearean experts, Illuminating Shakespeare presented the very best Shakespeare resources from across Oxford University Press. Take a look at some of our favourites from this anniversary year…
2016 was an important year in the fields of philosophy. As the year draws to a close, the OUP Philosophy team takes a moment to reflect.