By: Samantha Zimbler,
on 12/9/2015
With the most widely-celebrated winter holidays quickly approaching, test your knowledge of the cultural history and traditions that started these festivities. For example, what does Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have to do with Father Christmas? What are the key principles honored by lighting Kwanzaa candles?
The post Ready for the winter holidays? [Quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Samantha Zimbler,
on 11/16/2015
Although most historians of the French Revolution assign the French queen Marie-Antoinette a minor role in bringing about that great event, a good case can be made for her importance if we look more deeply into her politics than most scholars have.
The post Marie-Antoinette and the French Revolution appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Samantha Zimbler,
on 8/4/2015
On 6 August 2015, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will be turning 50 years old. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved this groundbreaking legislation to eliminate discriminatory barriers to voting. The Civil Rights Movement played a notable role in pushing the VRA to become law. In honor of the law's birthday, Oxford University Press has put together a quiz to test how much you know about its background, including a major factor in its success, Section 5.
The post Celebrating 50 years of the Voting Rights Act appeared first on OUPblog.
By: ErinF,
on 5/31/2015
Recent events in Baltimore, Ferguson, and other places have highlighted the explosive potential of discrimination and inequality. Much attention has been paid to police practices, the long-term effect of joblessness, and the trauma of the criminal justice system incarcerating large numbers of African-Americans. This focus on the present is understandable. It is also insufficient. There is a need to understand and address the huge disadvantages, and indeed disabilities, imposed on future generations by pre-natal conditions.
The post Unequal at birth appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 1/27/2015
Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last — the power to refuse our consent.
― Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and death camp at Auschwitz, I hope we can keep telling the stories of survival and miracles that the victims experienced. But never shall we forget the six million Jews that were murdered. There are many stories of the Shoah (Holocaust) that are told over and over again by survivors, witnesses, and children of survivors. Today, the tenuous relationship between Jews and Muslims around the world echoes negative sentiments and feelings about these two rich traditions. Anti-Semitism has been on the rise in Europe and unfortunately some of the weight of this tide rests on the shoulders of Muslim immigrants in Europe.
As an Islamic and Holocaust scholar, I was always saddened to witness such animosity and tension between the two traditions and decided to take another turn in the field of the Holocaust: Muslims and the Holocaust. I am a Muslim woman who teaches the Holocaust, Genocide, World Religions, and Islam; many questions are raised about my work and identity. Some scholars and community members view the two areas of study, Holocaust and Islam, in contradiction; they seem puzzled and at times, accuse me of being “divided.” They ask me: “How can you teach two unrelated fields? How can a Muslim teach the Holocaust? What kind of a scholar are you?” I am amused by these questions as I think of how much esoteric knowledge rests on dusty shelves, for I believe there is an important connection between my two areas of research.
My work has steered me to confront my own Muslim community on the suffering of “others,” which I argue can become a bridge of mutual understanding and interreligious dialogue. How can we create interreligious dialogue and confront the suffering of one another at different historical moments? How can we discuss and sustain dialogue, which by its very nature also risks dehumanizing the “other”? What aspects about Islam and about the Holocaust might connect both Muslims and Jews? And in a greater sense, what does my work offer students, communities, and academia? These and other questions haunt me every day, knocking on my faith, my study of Holocaust memoirs, my study of new research on Muslims and Jews during the Holocaust and colonialism.
The lost stories of Muslim rescuers and the relationship between Jews and Muslims in Arab countries have been lost under the noise of media portrayal of these faiths being at war throughout time. Israel and Palestine seems to carve the relationship for the rest of us and I feel that we must change that for the future of Judaism and Islam. To tell the stories of positive cooperation between Jews and Muslims is crucial in my work. To reflect on the deep-rooted anti-Semitism and Islamophobia within each community is an important.
Teaching the Holocaust to young students with very little knowledge of the Holocaust or Islam has been challenging. I invite Holocaust survivors to visit our classes and they are stunned and shocked at the stories of survival and loss. The personal connection creates an intimate reaction within the classroom and that is why I embarked on the idea of interviewing survivors. Interviewing survivors as a Muslim was an uncomfortable experience because I did not know what to expect and neither did they. There is one man I will never forget for the rest of my life:
On February 27th, 2010, I looked into the sky-blue eyes of Albert Rosa, an 85-year-old Shoah survivor, for three hours as he spoke about his experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau. As I left him, he told me with tears in his eyes that he wanted someone to write his life story, since he had very little formal education and would not be able to express in writing his feelings on the Shoah. He asked me, “How can I express in words how I felt when my sister was bludgeoned to death in front of me by a Nazi woman, or when I saw my elder brother hanging from a rope when I had tried to defend him?” I looked into his eyes, which had pierced me all day, and wondered how I could tell his story in words without losing the sense of the emotional and physical strength it had taken him to survive the horror of his life in the camps. He spoke of maggots crawling on his body as he was ordered to move the dead Jewish bodies, the gold he stole from the teeth of the dead, the urine he saved to nurse the wounds inflicted by a German Shepherd, the plant roots that he dug out with his fingers for nourishment, the ashes he swallowed from the crematorium as he helped build Birkenau. How was I to give these events any life with mere words? These feelings of paralysis emerge as I write this testimony; how I can give the Shoah a life of its own without trespassing on politics, ethics, and the millions of victims? In some ways, I felt like abandoning this project because I feared that I could not do it justice. (Shoah through Muslim Eyes (Academic Studies Press, 2015))
Finally, I hope to take the testimonies of survivors, lost stories of Muslims during the Holocaust, and the memory of two traditions to a new level where one can speak up for one another.
The post The lost stories of Muslims in the Holocaust appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 12/27/2014
Disseminating scholarship is at the heart of the Oxford University Press mission and much of academic publishing. It drives every part of publishing strategy—from content acquisition to sales. What happens, though, when a student, researcher, or general reader discovers content that they don’t have access to?
For example, while a majority of Oxford Handbook Online (OHO) and Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) users have access through their institutions, not everyone does; sometimes even those who do need to conduct research at home or while on leave, when they aren’t connected to their campus networks. To facilitate such research, Oxford has partnered with the Copyright Clearance Center to begin offering chapters on a pay-per-view basis. Pay-per-view is a well-established business model in journal publishing but is only recently gaining traction for book-based content.
Beginning in October, unauthenticated users of Oxford Handbooks began seeing buy buttons on articles. Clicking the button will allow them to purchase 24-hour access or, for a premium, unlimited perpetual access. And starting in the New Year, just in time for the start of the new term, this option will be available at the chapter level in Oxford Scholarship Online.
As with any change, we didn’t take this lightly. Oxford, like any other publisher, needed to fully weigh the risks against the benefits. Our partnership with the Copyright Clearance Center is focused on expanding access while maintaining our robust global institutional partnerships. The benefits were clear from the start: allowing more users to access our content—from any device at any hour of the day—and in a multitude of currencies. A student rushing to finish a paper at the end of the term or a researcher away from her library can have full access to the best scholarship with just a few clicks and a credit card. They can cite with confidence.
With just a few months under our belt, the early results are incredibly encouraging. Customers from around the globe are accessing award-winning content—some for just 24 hours, others choosing to retain the article in perpetuity. We’re working with these users throughout to learn more—from their geographical location to the ease of the transaction. All of this feedback helps us further develop this new access model, our platform, and the overall user experience. Over the next year, we will further experiment with discounting, personalization, and recommendations to make the most of this important project.
In the end, we hope to have learned great deal about getting the best research into the hands—and minds—of as many users as possible. That, after all, is our mission.
The post Alternative access models in academic publishing appeared first on OUPblog.
By: ErinF,
on 12/15/2014
The American Geophysical Union 2014 Fall Meeting begins on 15 December 2014 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center with nearly 24,000 scholars, scientists, and researchers predicted to attend. The AGU Fall Meeting brings together the entire Earth and space sciences community for discussions of emerging trends and the latest research.
Ellen Wohl, Editor in Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Environmental Science, and W. Tad Pfeffer, Editor in Chief of Oxford Handbooks Online in Natural Hazard Science, will serve as panelists alongside Susan Cutter and H.H. Shugart from the developing Oxford Research Encyclopedia program, at a talk about the future of earth and environmental science at AGU on 16 December 2014 from 4:00-5:00 p.m. in the Pacific J room of the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.
To get a short preview of this event, we touched base with Ellen and Tad to learn more about the new discoveries and investigations in these developing fields.
The disciplines that populate the Earth & Environmental Sciences have traditionally worked as defined entities with specific research trends. When faced with the multitude of issues stemming from natural disasters and environmental stressors, for example, is this model still relevant?
W. Tad Pfeffer: This is about the organization of knowledge, of course, as opposed to actual knowledge content. I think the disciplinary road map, with knowledge divided by traditional subject boundaries, is still important for the simple fact that so much of the recorded knowledge is organized and stored in that way. We need the traditional disciplinary structure to take full advantage of the existing body of scientific knowledge – but we also need linkages to the more recent (and growing) inter- and cross-disciplinary road maps, so that whatever map (i.e. knowledge structure) a user decides to follow, he or she not only gets to the right place (i.e. finds the right knowledge to apply to a problem), but can see the entire landscape along the way (i.e. is made aware of important related issues and alternative solutions).
Ellen Wohl: The model is relevant in that the depth of understanding that comes with disciplinary training and knowledge is critical to addressing complex, transdisciplinary issues. However, the issues transcend disciplinary boundaries and, to be effective, each individual must at least have some familiarity with the conceptual framework and knowledge of other relevant disciplines.
How can we best facilitate open trans-disciplinary dialogue in the Earth & Environmental Sciences, and ensure that these possibilities mature?
W. Tad Pfeffer: This probably comes about mostly through our education – what structure we experience as students when we are first learning our fields. But this can be supplemented by exposure to those linkages connecting disciplinary and cross-disciplinary ways of organizing knowledge. Fast, easy-to-use tools for finding knowledge, seeing how knowledge is organized, and comparing different organizational structures might be very powerful, and modern web-based search platforms combined with good documentation are perhaps ideal for this task.
Ellen Wohl: Among the ways to do this are to (1) tie research dollars to such approaches, (2) demonstrate the relevance of such approaches by highlighting (in journal articles and other venues) successful, multidisciplinary approaches to problem solving (whether the problem is applied/management or basic science), and (3) facilitating ease of access to information across disciplines, as with Oxford’s online resources.
What strengths and weaknesses can you identify in current research in your field, and how that research relates to applications?
W. Tad Pfeffer: One great strength in my research area of cryospheric environmental change is the growing use and sophistication of remote sensing tools for detecting and quantifying environmental change. These data sources generate tremendous volumes of data and demand disciplined use of data bases and imaginative processing methods to avoid getting hopelessly lost – another job for the tools I mentioned above.
A crucial weakness in my particular area, sea level rise and environmental change, is the lack of awareness among my colleagues of the nature of the needs and concerns of the actual consumers, or “end users,” of the knowledge we produce: planners, policy makers, risk managers, etc. The scientific community, guided by traditional “pure science” principles and motivations, look for problems that are challenging, interesting, and hopefully solvable with the tools available. These criteria do not always lead my colleagues toward problems that “end users” and the public find most urgent.
This is most obvious in the disparity in time scales of future events. End users and decision makers need knowledge of environmental changes on near-term time scales of decades, while the most attractive and challenging problems for scientists studying environmental change will, in many cases, not become significant human issues for centuries or millennia.
Ellen Wohl: The literature of my field and closely related fields has expanded so rapidly that it is difficult to keep abreast of continuing research and it can be very intimidating to try to learn about a new, related field when my research expands in different directions. That is one of the great values of review and synthesis papers, as well as one of the primary services that the Oxford Bibliographies Online can supply to professional scholars, as well as to students.
Headline image credit: 2011 Flooding From Mississippi River Levee Breach. NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The post On the future of environmental and natural hazard science appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 11/9/2014
“This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone. The GDR is opening its borders … the gates in the Berlin Wall stand open.”
—Hans Joachim Friedrichs, reporting for the Tagesthemen, 9 November 1989
On 9 November 1989, at midnight, the East German government opened its borders to West Germany for the first time in almost thirty years: a city divided, families and friends separated for a generation, reunited again. For much of its existence, attempting to cross the wall meant almost certain death, and around 80 East Germans were killed in the attempt, shot down by the border guards as they tried to make their escape. With this announcement, however, the gates were thrown open.
The mood was euphoric. East Germans surged through the opened gates, shouting and cheering, to be met by the West Germans on the other side. That same night, they began dismantling the barrier which had kept them apart together, chipping away the bricks to keep as mementos. The fall of the Wall — an ugly scar across Berlin, adorned in barbed wire and patrolled by guards with machine guns — was a pivotal event in German history. A nation crippled by the most devastating conflict in living memory, and then carved up and separated from itself by the victors, could finally shrug off the long shadow cast by a dark history, and look toward a brighter, unified future.
The seismic consequences of the demolition were also felt well beyond the borders of Germany, and, along with the slow rusting and decay of the Iron Curtain, helped to spell the end for the USSR. In just two years after the wall’s demolition, the Soviet Union would cease to exist, thus ending the era we now call the Cold War. A period of around fifty years, marked by suspicion, space rockets, assassinations, espionage, show trials, paranoia, and propaganda, and which brought the world to the brink of destruction with the Cuban Missile Crisis, was finally at an end.
To mark the 25th anniversary of this momentous moment, we’ve compiled a selection of free chapters and articles across our online resources, which shed further light on the history behind the wall, what it meant to live in a city divided by it, and how the USSR declined and eventually fell.
‘Walled in: 13 August 1961’ in Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power by Patrick Major
On Sunday 13 August 1961, the wall was erected. This chapter, drawing on first-hand accounts, examines the initial reactions to the wall. As quoted in the chapter, one source describes the atmosphere of the day the wall went up as if “East Berlin was dead. It was as if a bell‐jar had been placed over it and all the air sucked out. The same oppressiveness which hung over us, hung over all Berlin. There was no trace of big city life, of hustle and bustle. Like when a storm moves across the city. Or when the sky lowers and people ask if hail is on the way.”
‘Escape tunnels, death, and the commemoration of the GDR’s hero-victims’ in Death at the Berlin Wall by Pertti Ahonen
Whilst taking very little direct action against the wall, the West did offer covert assistance to groups of East Berlin activists trying to provide escape routes for those who wanted it. One of these groups was led by Rudolf Müller and his associates, who had dug a tunnel underneath the wall and were busy ferrying through escapees when a group of East German soldiers surprised them. Though they escaped unscathed, the confrontation left a twenty-one year-old soldier – Egon Schultz – dead. This chapter examines how Schultz and his death became idealised and politicised by the East German state, transforming him into a hero-victim of the ‘socialist frontier.’
‘The final phase, 1980–90’ in The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction by Robert J. McMahon
In the early 1980s the USSR was struggling with a war in Afghanistan, economic problems, and changes of leadership. From the middle of the 1980s, Soviet policy changes under Gorbachev ended the arms race and eventually relinquished control of Eastern Europe, bringing about an end to the Cold War and the USSR. This chapter looks at these final years of the Cold War, and explores the impact of Reagan and Gorbachev.
‘Gorbachev and the Reversal of History’ in The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia by Robert Daniels
One of the key factors in the demise of the USSR was the USSR itself – or, rather, the reforms of Gorbachev. With twin policies of ‘perestroika’ (literally ‘restructuring’) and ‘glasnost’ (a policy calling for increased transparency in the Soviet Union), Gorbachev began the slow process toward democratization, dismantling the totalitarian psychology that had marked previous Soviet regimes and paving the way for progressive reforms.
‘The Collapse of the East German State’ in Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century by Sharon Erickson Nepstad
Gorbachev’s policies, coupled with Hungary opening its borders to tens of thousands of East Germans, left the state with a crisis on its hands. When it decided to close its Hungarian borders, many citizens took to the streets to protest in what quickly became a large movement. Troops were sent to forcibly dispel the protesters, but their use of non-violent tactics made it difficult to justify the use of force, leading many of the troops to defy orders and defect. As the momentum for the movement grew, the strength of the state declined, leading to the fall of the wall and the eventual dismantling of East Germany.
‘The End of the Cold War’ in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War by Nicholas Guyatt
Guyatt examines different historical perspectives on what caused the end of the Cold War, as well as the psychological, strategic, and political effects of its aftermath. Was it the press statement made by Gorbachev’s spokesman after the fall of the Berlin Wall that the tensions, which spread “from Yalta to Malta,” were over that marked the War’s official end? Perhaps the end came with Gorbachev’s statement to the United Nations announcing the end of Soviet Union military force to subdue the satellite states of the Warsaw Pact in 1988. The article explores these catalysts, among others, to present a comprehensive look at the War’s end and its resulting feelings of anxiety, fear, and “triumphalism” that abounded in Western Europe.
‘After the Fall of the Wall: Living Through the Post-Socialist Transformation in East Germany’ in After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany, ed. Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke, and Karl Ulrich Mayer
As the wall came down, Germans were faced with a new challenge: how to forge a new, modern Germany. Linking the ‘macro’ worlds of institutional change to the ‘micro’ worlds of the lives and individual histories of its citizens, this chapter paints a fascinating portrait of once socialist and totalitarian state transitioning into the democratic Federal Republic of Germany.
‘Making Room for November 9, 1989?: The Fall of the Berlin Wall in German Politics and Memory’ in Twenty Years After Communism by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik
The dismantling of the wall, which was both a symbolic and literal division between East and West, could have served as a potent symbol for a unified Germany and played an integral part in its foundation myth, yet this was not the case. Why was this? Charting the reasons behind this – including the pre-existing German fields of memory left by its dark past – the chapter explains why the fall of the wall is likely to remain a “muted, tempered memory” in German politics.
What books would you add to our Berlin Wall reading list?
The post Reading up on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 9/23/2014
There’s something about the idea of ‘original pronunciation’ (OP) that gets the pulse racing. I’ve been amazed by the public interest shown in this unusual application of a little-known branch of linguistics — historical phonology, a subject that explores how the sounds of a language change over time. I little expected, when I was approached by Shakespeare’s Globe in 2004 to help them mount a production of Romeo and Juliet in OP, that ten years on the approach would become a thriving linguistic industry. Nor could I have predicted that a short documentary recording about OP for the Open University (which I made with actor son Ben in 2011) would for no apparent reason go viral towards the end of 2013, with 1.5 million hits in recent months.
A dozen Shakespeare plays have now been produced in original pronunciation, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Kansas University in 2010 and Hamlet at the University of Nevada (Reno) in 2011. This year a group from the University of Texas (Houston) brought an OP production of Julius Caesar to the Edinburgh Fringe. Next January, Ben Crystal and his OP ensemble are presenting Pericles in Stockholm as part of an Interplay series along with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. More productions are in the pipeline.
But it isn’t just Shakespeare. The interest in him tops the list, but it is a long list, in which the work of any dramatist from the period can be treated in this way. And not just drama. Poems and prose too. My recording of the Sonnets is available on the website associated with the book Pronouncing Shakespeare. An OP recording by Ben of one of John Donne’s long sermons can now be heard as part of the Virtual St Paul’s Cross project.
Donne takes us forward in time to the 1620s. Going backwards in time, the British Library wanted an original pronunciation recording of William Tyndale to accompany the publication of its facsimile of the Tyndale Gospels. They chose the Matthew Gospel, and I recorded this for them in 2013. That takes us back to 1525. There are earlier recordings in the BL archive, made for the Evolving English winter exhibition in 2011-12, including extracts from Beowulf, Chaucer, Caxton, and Paston. The British Library also commissioned a CD of Shakespeare extracts from Ben and his ensemble: Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation.
But the interest extends well beyond literature. Notably present in the talkback sessions after the first original pronunciation productions at the Globe were people interested in early music. And since then there have been many explorations into the kind of pronunciation used by Purcell (late 17th century), Dowland, and other composers. As with their literary counterparts, musicologists have been struck by the fact that so many of the rhymes in songs, madrigals, and operatic texts simply don’t work in modern English, and they want to hear them as they would have been. They note the way many of the vowels and consonants would have had different values in those days, and they want to explore how the texts would sound with those old values articulated. The result is a very different auditory experience, and — by all accounts — an exciting one.
Finally there are the heritage people. It’s all well and good establishing a historical centre where an old period is recreated, and people dress up in old clothes and walk around — but how should they speak? The occasional ‘verily’ and ‘forsooth’ isn’t enough. Here too we see an interest in recreating styles of speech that would have been used in those days.
Add all these constituencies together and you can see why the original pronunciation experiment has become something of an OP movement, with more and more people wanting to learn about OP, to hear it in practice, and to explore its application in texts that so far have received no study. Every new text brings to light something new — such as a previously unnoticed pun, or a fresh way of speaking a line. At university level, people are beginning to write dissertations on the subject. Ben, as I write, is exploring ways for his ensemble to cope with new OP commitments. There’s plenty to do. With only a dozen Shakespeare plays explored so far, that leaves a couple of dozen more awaiting investigation.
The consequence is an urgent need to provide materials to help people take original pronunciation activities forward. Paul Meier already has some tutorial material on his website, and his Dream production is available both as an audio recording and on a DVD. Several articles have now been written answering the usual questions people ask (such as ‘how do you know’?). And I am hard at work on an OP Shakespeare dictionary, which will enable people to make transcripts for themselves. I have paused, in the middle of letter N, to write this post. But with luck and a good following wind, I should have it finished in time for the great anniversary in 2016. And it will be published, of course, by Oxford University Press.
The post The lure of sounds appeared first on OUPblog.
What could philosophy have to do with odors and perfumes? And what could odors and perfumes have to do with Art? After all, many philosophers have considered smell the lowest and most animal of the senses and have viewed perfume as a trivial luxury.
The post Perfumes, olfactory art, and philosophy appeared first on OUPblog.
Novelists are used to their characters getting away from them. Tolstoy once complained that Katyusha Maslova was “dictating” her actions to him as he wrestled with the plot of his last novel, Resurrection. There was a story that after reading Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Stalin praised the work but advised the author to “convince” the main character, Melekhov, to stop loafing about and start serving in the Red Army.
The post An educated fury: faith and doubt appeared first on OUPblog.
The very look and feel of families today is undergoing profound changes. Are public policies keeping up with the shifting definitions of “family”? Moreover, as the population ages within these new family dynamics, how will families give or receive elder care? Below, we highlight just a few social changes that are affecting the experiences of aging families.
The post When aging policies can’t keep up with aging families appeared first on OUPblog.