Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
In honor of Independence Day in the U.S., we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses have inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday.
The 20th of June is International Surfing Day. I’m not sure if I have the proper street cred to write about surfing. For one thing, even though I grew up on the Mid-Atlantic coast, I can’t swim. My nephew, however, was part of a hardcore crowd who surfed regularly on the beaches near Ocean City, Maryland, and the Indian River Inlet, Delaware, in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
By Daniel B. Botkin
This year we will celebrate Earth Day for the 43rd time. Where have we come in those years in dealing with the environment, and how has Earth’s environment fared? I have been an ecological scientist since 1965, five years before the first Earth day. Many improvements have taken place in how the major nations deal with the environment.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
This week, in the spirit of our upcoming special issue on oral history’s evolving technologies, we want to (re)introduce everyone to the website Oral History in the Digital Age, a substantial collaboration between several institutions to “put museums, libraries, and oral historians in a position to address collectively issues of video, digitization, preservation, and intellectual property.
By Sarah Milligan
In March 2012, there was a discussion on the public folklorists’ listserv Publore about the evolution of oral history as a defined discipline and folklorists’ contribution to its development. As an observer and participant in both fields, I see overlap today. The leaderships of both national associations — the Oral History Association (OHA) and the American Folklore Society (AFS) — frequently collaborate on large-scale projects, like the current IMLS-funded project looking at oral history in the digital age.
A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats — this is the setting for Kafka’s story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village and access to the castle. In The Castle, Kafka explores the relationship between the individual and power, as the protagonist K. asks why the villagers so readily submit to an authority which may exist only in their collective imagination. In the following excerpt from the new Oxford World’s Classics edition, K. first encounters the castle and the strange power it holds over the village.
Many questioned how the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was going to make a mark after the spectacular Beijing Olympics only four years earlier. While Beijing presented the Chinese people moving as one body — dancing, marching, and presenting a united front to the world — the British answer was a chaotic and spirited ceremony, shifting from cricket matches to coordinated dance routines, Mr Bean’s comedic dream to a 100-foot Lord Voldemort.
By Ritchie Robertson
Some of the great modernists have written evocatively about childhood. At first glance, Kafka may not seem to be among them. The minutely detailed recollection of childhood that Proust provides in Swann’s Way, or Thomas Mann’s account of a school day in the life of young Hanno Buddenbrook, lack counterparts in Kafka. His world-famous and compelling fantasies are about inscrutable authorities, such as the Court and the Castle, and their victims are doomed at worst to inexplicable punishment, at best to frustration. Kafka would seem to deal with experience rather than innocence.
By Donald A. Ritchie
The 111th Congress began in January 2009 amid complaints about the long wait for the inauguration of the new president, and ended amid complaints about the long the lame duck session at its tail. Critics, who lament that transitions in the American government do not move as efficiently as in a parliamentary system, have declared the Twentieth Amendment a failure. While it is true that the U.S. Constitution set up a system that is anything but speedy, the Twentieth Amendment was actually a reform that reset the calendar and moved up the clock.
Hang on because this gets complicated: Back in 1788, after enough states had ratified the Constitution, the outgoing Congress under the Articles of Confederation set the first Wednesday in January as the date for the first presidential election.
Kicking off three great OUPblog posts on Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid is a short excerpt from the first chapter. Come back tomorrow for an exclusive Q&A with Peter Gill, followed by an original post by him on Thursday.
Donald A. Ritchie is Historian of the Senate and the author of Our Constitution, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government, Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, and most recently The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction. In this original post, he reflects on the legacy of the Declaration of Independence on the U.S. Government.
Well the time has come for me to say goodbye to all of you lovely readers. Running the OUPblog has been a dream job and leaving is very bittersweet. So I thought before I left we could take a trip down memory lane and review some of the best blog posts of the past. This list certainly is not conclusive, just a few of the thousands of posts I had the honor of sharing with you. Please keep in touch. You can follow my adventures on twitter @FordBecca. Ciao!
In Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, author Ritchie Robertson dedicates an entire section of the (very short) book to Kafka’s famous Letter to His Father. When reading the letter and the VSI together, it’s almost as if Franz rests on the couch and Robertson takes notes.
Donald Ritchie looks at common misperceptions about Roosevelt and Congress.
A look at the original reviews of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Donald Ritchie says goodbye to Walter Cronkite.