Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
With the 31st of October quickly approaching, scores of costumes and vast amounts of candy are disappearing from stores as we prepare for Halloween. But, with all the time and money put into the decorations and celebration, how much do we really know about this widely celebrated tradition? How many of us can even define the term, Halloween?
By Kate Scott
The last time President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln sat for a portrait photograph together was in the early 1870s, five years or more after the president’s death and burial. The president, filmy and translucent, tenderly placed his see-through hands on his wife’s shoulders as she looked into the camera.
I heard about Lou Reed’s death in the most modern of ways. He had taken over my Twitter feed, which on Sunday was suddenly filled with links to Rolling Stone‘s obituary, often preceded by shock-induced expletives or followed by links to a video of a favorite song.
By Kelly Besecke
The relationship between reason and spirituality has been part of our cultural conversation since the advent of modernity. In recent times, we’ve seen this conversation play out in public debates over creationism and arguments between religious leaders and representatives of a “new atheism.”
The 2013 Oxford Place of the Year (POTY) process is now in full swing. The longlist poll closes this Thursday, so be sure to get your votes in! (Scroll to the bottom of this page to vote.) The POTY shortlist will be announced on Monday, 4 November 2013.
By Sergey Vasiliev
In late July 2013, The Guardian reported that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC), a global Jewish NGO, had launched a poster campaign in Germany requesting the public to assist in identifying and bringing to justice the last surviving alleged perpetrators of crimes under the Nazi regime. Two thousand posters were hung in the streets, featuring a sinister black-and-white image of the most horrific dead-end the modern-era humankind has seen: the snow-covered rail tracks approaching the gate of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp.
By Lizzie Shannon-Little
What better way to send shivers down your spine this Halloween than to curl up with a spooky tale? These Classics have been putting the frighteners on people for quite some time, and we’ve got the collywobbles just thinking about them.
By Henry S. Richardson
A huge amount of ethical angst swirls around the topic of informed consent. Can lay people who are considering signing up as subjects in a medical study really be made to understand the risks they are facing?
By Joseph B. Raskin
Service on the first route of the New York City subway system began 109 years ago today, on 27 October 1904. The occasion was marked by ceremonies in City Hall, led by George A. McClellan and representatives of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the operators of that line. Mayor McClellan saw the opening of the subway as the beginning of a new era for the greater city.
By David Brian Robertson
In the The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay offer us urgent lessons for coping with the kind of gridlock that grips American government today. They were defending a plan intended to replace a failing national government. The proposed Constitution aimed to break a government stalemate that threatened the survival of the infant American republic.
In anticipation of Argentina’s mid-term elections to be held on Sunday, 27 October 2013, Political Analysis co-editor R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) discussed some of the most important things that we need to know about this contest with Francisco Cantu (University of Houston) and Sebastian Saiegh (UCSD).
The debate over immigration policy is characterized by explosive rhetoric on both sides. Paul Collier, author of Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World, discusses why liberals and conservatives both need to reassess their positions, and how we must find a middle ground based on sound data and research.
By Gianfranco Bertone
A quiet turmoil agitates the international scientific community, as cosmology and particle physics discretely inch toward a pivotal paradigm shift.
The giant detectors that have allowed the much celebrated discovery of the Higgs boson, for which the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded this October, now sit quietly in the depths of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider tunnel — barely fitting in their underground hall, like the green apple in Magritte’s painting The Listening Room —
By Ana M. Valdes
Aging is a complex process of accumulation of molecular, cellular, and organ damage, leading to loss of function and increased vulnerability to disease and death.
By Steven Sielaff
Throughout my time as Oral History Review (OHR) editorial assistant at the Oral History Association’s (OHA) annual conference in Oklahoma City, OK, I saw a number of prevailing themes. In the recent past, the push towards digitization and web-based portals has dominated the professional landscape. This was certainly the case again at this year’s conference.
By Jerome Loving
More than a century ago, on October 25, 1902, we lost a major novelist by the name of Frank Norris, author of McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899). Like Stephen Crane, he died in his prime, but not before writing at least one of the great American novels in the naturalist tradition of Thomas Hardy and Theodore Dreiser.