Search Term: place of the year

HIV/AIDS: How to stop the unstoppable?

By Dorothy H. Crawford
It is over 100 years since HIV, the AIDS virus, began spreading in humans. It all started in West Central Africa where, scientists calculate, HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans around 1900. Then in 1964 the virus made its first trans-continental flight. In one move it leaped from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Here it established a foot-hold in Haiti before travelling on to the US in 1969. So began a journey that took HIV to virtually every country in the world, eventually infecting 65 million people, a figure that is rising by around three million annually.

Editing the classics, past and present

By Judith Luna
Actually, editing classics is just what I don’t do. My job can be a bit of a mystery to people who wonder whether I rephrase the occasional Jane Austen sentence, or improve Virginia Woolf’s punctuation. Most days I am looking for living authors, not dead ones: the editors and translators who are responsible for the introductions and notes, and who actually do make decisions about how best to present the texts for modern readers.

Music we’re thankful for in 2013

By Taylor Coe

With Thanksgiving as a time of the year to reflect on what brings us joy and …, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the music that we’re thankful for having in our lives.

Thanksgiving? The deprivations and atrocities that followed

By Stephen L. Pevar
Every schoolchild is taught that the holiday of Thanksgiving commemorates the feast the Pilgrims arranged to thank the Indians for their friendship, for sharing their land, and for showing them how to grow, harvest, and store food. Accounts say that the generosity of the Indians saved the colonists from starvation during the harsh New England winter of 1620.

R v Hughes and death while at the wheel

By John Watson
In their judgement in the case of R v Hughes [2013] UKSC 56, the UK Supreme Court has issued guidance which, arguably, negates the offence of s. 3ZB of the Road Traffic Act 1988 of causing death by being unlicensed, uninsured or disqualified from driving. In a case since this judgement the CPS stated they considered this offence as written ‘no longer existed’ due to the Hughes decision.

National Bible Week: Learning with Don Kraus, OUP Bible editor

To celebrate National Bible Week, we sat down with our long-time Bibles editor, Don Kraus, to find out more about his experience with publishing bibles at Oxford University Press.

The bin of plenty

By Travis McDade
In a desk donated to the Vermont thrift store at which he worked, Tim Bernaby was pleasantly surprised to find several letters and cards written by Robert Frost. He took these missives and sold them for $25,000. When asked about it, he said he found the items not in the desk, but in the trash.

Doctor Who at fifty

Doctor Who was first broadcast by BBC Television at 5.16pm on Saturday 23 November 1963. This weekend the BBC marks the fiftieth anniversary with several commemorative programmes on television, radio, and online—as well as a ‘global simulcast’ of the anniversary adventure, which places the two actors who’ve most recently played ‘the Doctor’…

Brave new world?

By Richard J. Miller
Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of the author Aldous Huxley. Huxley was celebrated for many things and his involvement with the culture of psychotropic drugs was certainly one his most famous, or perhaps infamous, associations.

Thoughts on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination

As we recall the “crime of the century” in Dallas a half century ago, it seems appropriate to ponder some thoughts perhaps relevant to that terrible event. I make no claims to having inside information on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but I am aware of several theories that range from the lone gunman to any number of conspiracies involving any number of conspirators.

Rowan Williams on C.S. Lewis and the point of Narnia

C.S. Lewis, the beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia among other books, died 50 years ago today. Overshadowed by the assassination of President Kennedy and the death of Aldous Huxley, his death went largely unnoticed in the media, but his work continues to be debated.

Promoting a sensible debate on migration

Khalid Koser
Migration has had a rough ride in recent years. During times of recession, anti-immigrant sentiments often increase. Minor political parties around the world have taken full advantage and gained political capital from xenophobic policies. In many countries the media has followed suit, systematically reporting on migrants in negative terms. And political leaders are finding it hard to swim against this rising tide.

Woody Allen, P.D. James, and Bernard Williams walk into a philosophy book…

Our ability to lead good lives right now is more dependent upon the survival of future generations than we usually recognize. Our motivations, values, and desires depend upon those who will follow us – and not even our children and grandchildren — but future generations of human beings we will never meet or know.

Selfies and the history of self-portrait photography

By Kandice Rawlings

Selfie – the Oxford Word of the Year for 2013 – is a neologism defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.

Benjamin Britten, revisited

By Heather Wiebe

By Heather Wiebe
When I was charged with the task of updating the article on Benjamin Britten in Grove Music Online, I thought it would be a relatively simple matter. As Britten’s centenary year approached, it seemed an opportune moment, and the article was one I admired.

The vanished printing houses

By Martyn Ould
Someone on even the most cursory visit to Oxford must surely see two fine buildings that once housed the University Press: the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building, close to each other on today’s Broad Street. If they venture further afield, perhaps heading for the restaurants and bars along Walton Street, they also can’t fail to notice the neo-classical building that has been the Press’s current home since 1832. What they’ll never see however is the Press’s second home.