Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Anatoly Liberman
As has often happened in the recent past, this essay is an answer to a letter, but I will not only address the question of our correspondent but also develop the topic and write about Old Nick, his crew, and the goblin. The question was about the origin of the words bogey and boggle. I have dealt with both in my dictionary and in passing probably in the blog.
22 May 1972 The following is a brief extract from The History of the World: Sixth Edition by J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad. In October 1971 the UN General Assembly had recognized the People’s Republic as the only legitimate representative of China in the United Nations, and expelled the representative of Taiwan. This was not […]
OUP recently partnered with The Poetry Archive to support Poetry by Heart, a new national poetry competition in England. Here, competition winner Kaiti Soultana talks about her experience.
By Dr. Robert V. McNamee
Spring 2013 marks two significant anniversaries for Alexander Pope, perhaps the most representative and alien English poet of the 18th century. Pope is memorialized both for the 325th anniversary of his birth, on 21 May 1688, and for the 300th anniversary of two significant literary acts: one a publication, the other a proposal to publish.
There’s never been a shortage of readers to love and admire Alexander Pope. But if you think you don’t, or wouldn’t, like his poetry, you’re in good company there too. Ever since his own day, detractors have stuck their oar in, some blasting the work and some determined to write off the writer. A noted poet and anthologist, James Reeves, wrote an entire book in 1976 to assail Pope’s achievement and influence.
The centenary of the 29 May 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is being celebrated by numerous orchestras and ballet companies this year, which is always worth mentioning when that first performance incited a riot. The ballet (also performed as an orchestra piece) depicts a collection of pagan spring rituals involving fortune telling, holy processions, and culminating in l’élue (the elected one) dancing herself to death.
By Yale Kamisar
In 1984 a 6-3 majority of the US Supreme Court established the “public safety” exception to Miranda in a case called New York v. Quarles. Unfortunately, the factual basis for the exception the Court made in this case was quite weak.
By Grégoire Marino
In its December press release, the European Commission agreed to reopen the debate on copyright. A dialogue will be launched to tackle several major issues with the current copyright framework, including the topic ‘user-generated content’. The outcome of this open discussion should guide the Commission in its mission to modernize the European copyright framework and adapt it to the digital economy.
By Gautam Shroff
Notwithstanding the many privacy concerns it raises, the role of video surveillance footage in cracking the Boston terror attack case in a matter of days is well known. Such footage played an equally critical role in tracking down the bombers of the 2005 London attacks. However, in 2005 investigators took weeks to manually sift through about two thousand hours of video footage.
By Gina Heathcote
Gender studies begin by asking how you understand gender, the boundary, the space, the difference, the divergence and the sameness between m and f. How femininity and masculinity are knowable, reversible, collapsible, forgettable, changeable and open to renegotiation, supposedly given, fixed, yet mutable.
By Prof. Israel Doron
Historically, law was not generally considered an important part of gerontological science. As noted by Doron & Hofman (2005), the law was, at best, considered part of gerontology in that it played a part in the shaping of public policy towards the older population, or was incidental to ethical discussions connected with old age. At worst, gerontology has simply ignored those aspects of the law connected with the old, and kept lawyers out of its province.
By Robert G. Shulman
I’ve spent decades in magnetic resonance research and since 1980 my colleagues and I have been studying the human brain. Like many fields of science, it is astounding to reflect on the progress made in the uses of magnetic resonance which has gone from being a physicist’s means of studying the nucleus to an omnipresent tool for clinical medicine and biological research, especially in neuroscience.
By Helen Lavretsky, M.D., M.S.
There is currently extensive use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) — also known as integrative or mind-body medicine — in the United States to sustain well-being in both aging baby boomers and in children and adolescents.
Audi now employs two generations of Spocks as spokesmen and Axe body spray hawks a space voyage sweepstakes to hormonal jocks with the promise that chicks dig astronauts. Tired of ninjas, pirates, robots, and zombies, edgy advertisers appear to have set their fad-hungry gaze on space as the current (if not final) frontier of Awesome—the somewhat-undefinable quality that high-fives our inner ten year-old.
The failures of leadership… the destructive power of beauty… the quest for fame… the plight of women… the brutality of war… Such themes have endured for over 2,700 years in Homer’s classic The Iliad — from the flight of Helen and Paris, to the fury of Menelaus and Agamemnon, to the fight between Hector and Achilles. We sat down with Barbara Graziosi and Anthony Verity, the writer of the introduction and translator respectively, to discuss the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Iliad.
By Joel Paris, MD
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a classification of all diagnoses given to patients by mental health professionals. Since the publication of the third edition in 1980, each edition has been a subject of intense interest to the general public. The current manual, DSM-5, is the first major revision since 1994.