Oxford University Press's Blog, page 889

Paul Collier on immigration

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Paul Collier, CBE is a Professor of Economics, Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Antony’s College. He is the author of Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World; The Plundered Planet; Wars, Guns, and Votes; and The Bottom Billion, winner of Estoril Distinguished Book Prize, the Arthur Ross Book Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize.

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From the Higgs to dark matter

By Gianfranco Bertone

A quiet turmoil agitates the international scientific community, as cosmology and particle physics discretely inch toward a pivotal paradigm shift.

CERN ATLAS detector. Photo by Blankenstijn Andrea aka DaяkAngel, 2008. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.

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 — waiting for the accelerator to be upgraded and brought to its maximum discovery potential, sometime around the end of 2014.

When new beams of particles start to circulate again in the 27-kilometerlong tunnel, it will be at almost twice the energy reached in the previous run: an energy that may allow the creation and discovery of new particles, including hopefully the mysterious ones that seem to permeate, shape, and support the entire Universe: dark matter particles.

Meanwhile, scientific organizations worldwide are sponsoring the construction of numerous large underground detectors to sift dark matter particles from other forms of cosmic radiation. A wide array of other Astroparticle experiments (the AMS-02 detector aboard the international space station, NASA’s Fermi satellite, the Icecube neutrino telescope at the South Pole) seek to detect the pale light produced by dark matter particles as they collide with each other in cosmic structures.

Why so much interest in dark matter? The roots of this mystery run deep in time, but only very recently has the dark matter problem manifested itself in all its inexorable, fierce difficulty, shaking the foundations of cosmology and particle physics. The understanding of the universe had proceeded rather linearly from the beginning of the 20th century, when Hubble had discovered the expansion of the universe. But when, in the 1970s, scientists tried to put together the many pieces of the cosmic puzzle and to come up with a consistent cosmological model, these pieces just didn’t seem to fit.

To complete that puzzle, the existence of a new form of matter, dark matter, had to be postulated. Suddenly galaxies like our own Milky Way became uncomfortably big, embarrassingly massive, and overall quite bizarre. Nobody knew what galaxies, or at that point anything else in the universe, were actually made of anymore.

Physicists are fortunately imaginative people, and over the last three decades, they have devised dozens of explanations for the dark matter problem, mostly in the form of new particles. Among these dark matter candidates, weakly interacting massive particles are by far the most studied, for they emerge ‘naturally’ from theories that seek to extend the already rich and heterogeneous zoo of known particles and fields.

It is the connection between dark matter and the possible existence of new physics at the weak scale that is about to be put to test with the LHC and the new generation of astroparticle experiments, for these particles are expected to leave a trace in one or more of those detectors.

There are two possibilities. If no new particles are found within the next five years, this paradigm will inevitably be abandoned, and the community will be forced to go back to the drawing board and formulate new hypotheses. If instead, new particles are found, that discovery would pave the way of a new golden age in cosmology and particle physics.

Either way, we are about to get an answer. And in an era where scientific experiments require the coordinated effort of hundreds or thousands of people over several decades, that is a comforting thought.

Gianfranco Bertone is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he investigates topics at the interface between Particle Physics and Cosmology. He is the author of Behind the Scenes of the Universe: From the Higgs to Dark Matter, editor of the book Particle Dark Matter: Observations, Models and Searches, and editor-in-chief of the journal Physics of the Dark Universe.

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Metabolomic markers of aging

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. Lifestyle choices such as smoking and physical fitness can hasten or delay the aging process. This has led to the search for molecular markers of age that can be used to predict, monitor, and provide insight into age-associated decline and disease.

Metabolomics is a novel technology that entails the simultaneous study of numerous low-molecular weight compounds, called metabolites. The aim is to profile all low-molecular weight metabolites that are present in biological samples. Metabolites represent intermediate and end products of metabolic pathways that rapidly reflect physiological dysfunctions and may mirror early stages of a pathological process.

We investigated the relationship between 280 metabolites and the age of a person. We screened blood samples given by 3000 pairs of twins (6000 individuals) aged between 17 and 85, and found that 22 of the 280 metabolites varied most with the age of donors. The graph below divides the twins into 5-year age groups showing that collectively, concentrations of the 22 gradually change with age, demonstrating the potential for telling age from a blood sample alone.

One metabolite, a sugar-loaded amino acid called C-glycosyltryptophan (C-glytrp), was of particular interest because levels of it in blood were markedly different in samples from younger and older sets of twins, but also, within given age groups it was higher among donors with high blood pressure, low bone mass, and low lung function. This suggests that this metabolite is related to physiological aging.

Further investigations revealed that there was also a link between C-glytrp levels and low birthweight. Birthweight is known to be developmental determinant of healthy aging. Low birthweight has been shown by many studies to increase risk of a host of problems in adulthood including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis. In our study some pairs of identical twins had different levels of C-glytrp, and 10 per cent of this could be explained by unusually large differences in birth-weight between the two twins, despite their identical genetics. In fact, we find that most of the variation in C-glytrp (72%) is not genetically influenced.

Our findings also provide molecular mechanisms for the relationship between factors in the womb and infancy and aging in later life.  A chemical change in the DNA (methylation) at a gene called WDR85 was correlated with the metabolite related to aging and birthweight. This gene involved in protein translation is important has been shown in previous published studies to be important in both embryonic development and cell senescence in mice.

The fact that methylation (an epigenetic change) at the DNA that encodes this gene is correlated with C-glyTrp suggests that the link between weight at birth and aging may be related to molecular processes related to cellular senescence that are involved with protein translation.

The aim of our future research is to build up the predictive potential for the panel as a whole by finding similar correlations with ill health for some of the other metabolites, but this will require considerably more research. We would like to better understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie C-glyTrp and investigate its role in other important aging traits such as inflammation, insulin resistance, and muscle strength.

New molecular technologies such as metabolomics are enabling detailed studies of the molecular changes that result in aging and are thus revealing information about biological pathways that change with age. In the near future it will become possible to tell from an individual’s “metabolomic profile” the extent of their biological aging, and whether it matches their calendar age or they may have a younger or older biological age. Continued research in this area will help in disease prevention and treatment for age-related diseases.

Ana M Valdes received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley where she specialized in Genetic Epidemiology. She is a Reader and Associated Professor at the University of Nottingham. Her research work is focused on deciphering the molecular mechanisms related to aging and in particular age-related diseases such as osteoarthritis and gout. She is one of the authors of the paper ‘Metabolomic markers reveal novel pathways of ageing and early development in human populations’ in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The International Journal of Epidemiology is an essential requirement for anyone who needs to keep up to date with epidemiological advances and new developments throughout the world. It encourages communication among those engaged in the research, teaching, and application of epidemiology of both communicable and non-communicable disease, including research into health services and medical care.

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Image credits: (1) The graph is taken from the paper referenced in this post. (2) By the author.

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Considering your digital resume

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. However, a new variant on that theme caught my attention: professional academics’ use of digital projects as valid scholarship. Recognizing non-traditional publication sources as acceptable, even tenure-worthy, material has been a hot-topic issue for a while now. However, we are able to seriously consider this topic in large part thanks to the combined efforts of leading individuals and publications in our field, which strive towards a unified standard of best practices in the digital realm.

Oral History in the Digital Age (OHDA), the IMLS grant-funded effort to collect any and all “best practices” dealing with those little 1s and 0s, is now entering its second year. The website has accomplished a great deal in its infancy. It currently includes over sixty scholarly articles, a wiki detailing 300 plus sample websites, an ever-growing glossary of terms and concepts, and several button-pushing video series, such as “Thinking Big” and “Ask Doug.” In speaking with project founder Dean Rehberger and primary contributor Doug Boyd in the multiple sessions and venues we shared during the annual meeting, it became apparent that despite the great leaps OHDA and others have made in gathering resources, the work of producing profession-wide standards — similar to those housed on the OHA homepage — remains the long-term goal. From my vantage point, the OHA leadership seems eager to facilitate this mission, and I have high hopes that in the coming year, they and OHDA will progress towards a final, publishable product.

OHA Annual Meeting Session 8. 4 participants (left – right): John Yackulics, Michelle Holland, Dean Rehberger and Jennifer Abraham Cramer. Photo courtesy of Steven Sielaff.

This, of course, will be no simple feat. There are many areas in which, despite the presence and inclusion of other professional agencies and experts, digital standards remain hazy at best. In the Campus Oral History roundtable for instance, there was a spirited discussion on not only how to use video recording in your projects, but if you should even include it in the first place (short answer: It depends…). This topic is complicated further by the fact that for video, there is still no true preservation standard. At Baylor, we only recently established our university standard, and only after months of discussion, collaboration, and process investigation. I’m sure such difficulties will continue to require revision and further consideration; I can only hope they will not discourage us from working in the digital world entirely.

This leads me to my time spent with the OHR staff and their role in this issue. The OHR recently began featuring multimedia reviews on a diverse series of projects, ranging from feature-length documentaries to websites. The hope is that through peer review, oral historians who conduct and present work through non-traditional channels will be provided the same level of academic accolades as their text-producing colleagues. Like the OHDA, this enterprise is still in its beginning stages and the OHR continues to discuss how best to tackle certain challenges: what standards, if any, should be considered in the review process; who is qualified to act as a reviewer in such a varied field; and what, exactly, constitutes a “project”? Regardless, the OHR is doing great work by gathering and reviewing multimedia ventures, and they encourage those interested to both submit candidates for review and to volunteer as reviewers.

Considered on the whole, these various quandaries may seem daunting; and given my personal experiences in this field, I can say that progress will certainly not be made overnight. However, with OHDA’s resources, the OHR’s review efforts, and the interest of so many in the profession, I feel that we are well on our way to unified standards and a new paradigm for academic contribution.

Steven Sielaff (Waco) is a recent 2013 graduate of Baylor University’s Museum Studies Master’s program. For the past two years, he was a graduate assistant at the Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH), working on such projects as: For the Greater Good: Philanthropy in Waco; The Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission’s Texas Liberators Project; and oral history series on both the Dr. Pepper Museum and Mayborn Museum Complex. Currently, Steven is beginning a two-year effort to chronicle the past 25 years of Baylor University history. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Texas Oral History Association (TOHA) and as editor and technical consultant for H-Net’s H-Oralhist listserv.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, add them to your circles on Google Plus, follow them on Tumblr, listen to them on Soundcloud, or follow the latest OUPblog posts via email or RSS to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

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Remembering Frank Norris

By Jerome Loving

More than a century ago, on 25 October 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. The composition of McTeague began as a college assignment at Harvard, and Norris dedicated the finished product to his professor, L. E. Gates. It was long before “creative writing” was taught in universities, a time when struggling authors had to struggle and juggle their finances in the absence of an independent income. Young Norris wrote his novel for academic credit in an literature class at a time when the prevailing pedagogical theory sought to put the reader on the other side of the writing process. In other words, if you could put yourself in the place of the novelist or the poet, you would come to more fully comprehend and better appreciate the writer’s accomplishment.

Naturalism, as Norris defined it, went beyond realism and its “drama of the broken teacup,” to look at the individual as the victim of heredity and environment. Whereas the protagonist of a realistic novel, for example, the heroine of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady (1881), emerges from material failure with her dignity intact, the main character, indeed nearly all the characters, in McTeague are destined to rise and fall according to identities forged in their generational past and conflicted present. The unlicensed San Francisco dentist is happy with his dull existence until his human cage has been shaken. When faced with personal catastrophe, he reverts to the genetic past of his father who “was a hard-working shift boss” in California’s gold mines for thirteen days out of each fortnight and “an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy with alcohol” every other Sunday. In the face of trouble, Mac’s wife Trina reverts to her German-Swiss background in miserliness, thus triggering a violent and brutal clash with her unemployed husband. In fact, most of the characters in McTeague become the victims of their hereditary flaws and current crises. A Social Darwinist and a product of economic privilege, Frank Norris subscribed to the ideas of Cesare Lombroso, the Italian criminologist who believed in “natural born” killers, thus subscribing to the atavistic theory that certain types of individuals were potentially degenerate and subject to the beast within.

In Vandover and the Brute, also first drafted during his Harvard days but not published until 1914, Norris dramatizes how an economically privileged individual may squander his middle-class advantages by giving in to his baser instincts, or the “brute within.” Whereas McTeague and his fellows start from the bottom, so to speak, and end up at the bottom, Vandover forfeits his superior circumstances with drink and gambling, much in the way the young Frank Norris could have fooled away his economic opportunities as the son of a wealthy businessman. As a member of the white, Anglican-based, male middle-class, however, neither is subject to Darwin’s law of natural selection. Rather, as a member of a superior class, he is—according to Herbert Spencer’s ameliorative adaptation of Darwin—better able to survive the law of nature, or the jungle. This idea has come to be called Social Darwinism, which insisted on the role of morality and limited free will in the quest for the “survival of the fittest.”

It was probably this condescending attitude that made McTeague so successful in its day, because it reinforced current stereotypes.  Readers at the end of the nineteenth century were allowed to view the Jew Zerkow as a dirty, money-grubbing killer; the Hispanic woman Maria as the hopelessly crazy “maid of all work”; Trina as the hopeless miser, and Mac, the dentist, who after his crime returns to the mining camps of his father with the instinctive accuracy of a “homing pigeon.” Unlike their social superiors, they are all flawed in their scramble to survive urban life and the lack of urbanity in their natures.

It’s a fast-moving story, but don’t try to give it to your dentist!

Jerome Loving, Distinguished Professor of English at Texas A&M University, is the editor of Oxford World Classics edition of Frank Norris’s McTeague and  Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. He is the author of a number of biographies, including Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. His Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War was published on October 13, 2013. He has previously written on Walt Whitman for OUPblog.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

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Image Credit: Frank Norris from The Bancroft Library Portrait Collection, Berkeley, Ca. [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

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Shakespeare in disguise

Celebrate Halloween with Shakespeare and Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO)! Test your knowledge on which characters disguise themselves, what the witches say around their cauldron, why ghosts haunt the living, and who plays tricks in the night …

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The electronic environment of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) provides a new research method and tool for the reader, who can quickly examine the history of the scholarly editing of a work or see instantly how a particular word used in a text has changed over time. OSEO makes it possible for students and scholars to interrogate texts in ways that could never have been done before. Discover the answers to the quiz questions and more on OSEO.

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Astrobiology: pouring cold asteroid water on Aristotle

By David C. Catling

Over 2,300 years ago, in his book De Caelo (On the Heavens), Aristotle asked if other Earth-like worlds existed and dismissed the idea. But now, remarkably, the question is on the verge of being answered scientifically. NASA’s Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, has collected data on the statistical occurrence of small planets that orbit stars at a distance where it’s the right temperature for liquid water and conceivably life. The endeavour of identifying potentially habitable planets is part of the convergence of astronomy, biology and geology into astrobiology—the study of the origin and evolution of life on our own planet and the possible variety of life elsewhere.

In astrobiology, the need to assimilate different disciplines is illustrated by the factors that allow Earth-like planets to form. Someone familiar with astrophysics and geology can deduce that rocky planets are an expected consequence of the physics of starlight. Meanwhile, a scientist who knows planetary science and geochemistry will conclude that you drink asteroid water.

Consider starlight first. Hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium were made in the Big Bang, but all the other chemical elements are products of nuclear reactions inside stars. In the reactions, elements that are made up of whole numbers of fused helium atoms are favoured, including oxygen, magnesium, silicon, and iron. Rocky planets form from the dispersed remnants of old stars, and the four aforementioned elements dominate the minerals inside the Earth. So even before the Kepler telescope started finding exoplanets (planets around other stars), physics told us that Earth-like worlds should be out there. The nature of starlight preordains a cosmos teeming with rocky planets.

What about asteroid water? All the Earth’s life-giving water had to come from somewhere. Rocky planets amalgamated out of a disk of material when the Solar System formed. Computer simulations show that icy asteroids that were scattered out of a region between Mars and Jupiter were responsible for bringing most of the water to the growing Earth. Furthermore, studies of water inside meteorites support the theory.

Of course, water is only one ingredient for life as we know it, so what else was needed? Signs of extinct life in ancient terrestrial rocks provide clues. Life originated on Earth at least 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. Then afterwards, an alien landscape devoid of animals and large plants persisted for the next 3 billion years in part because of the lack of abundant oxygen. In fact, genetics suggest that the common ancestor of all life today was a microbe that lived in conditions of 80-100°C and negligible oxygen. Today, the study of microbes in similar environments below the Earth’s surface or in warm, fractured seafloor provides hints about early life.

Evolutionary obstacles may be the reason why it took a long time for single-celled life to evolve into animals and large plants. One tricky step was evolving the right type of cell. Of the three basic types on Earth, only eukaryote cells form large multicellular organisms, unlike the microbial cells of bacteria or archaea. A second hurdle was that the atmosphere had to become oxygen-rich to enable large organisms to exist and breathe. Astrobiologists study whether such steps were difficult or easy to provide insight into the possible prevalence of complex, Earth-like life elsewhere.

Unlike the demands of complex life, biologists have found microbes (extremophiles) that are adapted to environmental extremes such as temperature, acidity, pressure, and salinity. As a result, it’s not unreasonable that extremophiles might live below the surface of Mars or in salty, high-pressure oceans deep inside the icy moons in the outer Solar System.

In fact, the possibility of life existing (or having existed) elsewhere in our own Solar System is far from settled. Mars gets the most press but many other bodies are candidates. Objects with possible subsurface seas and potential life include Ceres (the largest asteroid); Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (moons of Jupiter); Titan, Enceladus, and Rhea (moons of Saturn); Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus); Triton (Neptune’s largest moon); and finally Pluto and similar icy dwarf planets beyond Pluto. Life may also have originated and gone extinct on ancient Venus before its surface evolved to today’s hellish 460°C and an air pressure of 93 atmospheres pressure. Only future exploration can tell.

One certainty is that new discoveries of exoplanets promise a busy future for astrobiology. It’s just a matter of time before we know about the atmospheres and surfaces of Earth-like exoplanets. Many peculiar worlds will also be found: dead planets with pure carbon-dioxide atmospheres, worlds covered entirely with glinting oceans, and young planets so close to their parent star that they’re shedding atmospheres of steam to space. But on benign worlds, the possibility of life will be of intense interest. Welcome to astrobiology and trying to understand life here and elsewhere!

David Catling is a Professor of Earth and Space Sciences and the author of Astrobiology: A Very Short Introduction. After a doctorate at the University of Oxford, he worked as a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Francisco, from 1995-2001. In 2001, he was appointed as one of the world’s first astrobiology professors at the University of Washington in Seattle. From 2005-2008, Prof. Catling was European Union Marie Curie Chair in Earth System and Planetary Studies at the University of Bristol, before returning to Seattle in 2009. He has taught astrobiology courses for over a decade and has published over eighty papers and articles in areas ranging from the geology of Mars, to the biochemistry of complex life, to the co-evolution of Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credits: 1) An artistic space/astrobiology picture from NASA, public domain; 2) Word cloud image created by author

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International Law Weekend 2013

By Jo Wojtkowski

The 2013 International Law Weekend Annual Meeting is taking place this week at Fordham Law School, in New York City (24-26 October 2013).

The theme of this year’s meeting is “Internationalization of Law and Legal Practice,” exploring the increasing importance of international law for every lawyer in today’s society. Panel discussions will examine how the principles and instruments of international law are prevalent in domestic law, covering areas such as civil litigation, commercial transactions, trade regulation, family law, criminal prosecution, intellectual property, and dispute settlement.

ILW is sponsored and organized by the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA) and the International Law Students Association (ILSA). For the full ILW schedule of events, visit ILSA and American Branch of the International Law Association websites. Over one thousand practitioners, academics, diplomats, members of the public and NGO sectors, and law students are expected to attend the event.

Some highlights at the conference:

Never miss a keynote, and this year’s is from Donald Donovan, Partner, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.
Given the recent revelations about NSA spying, “Big Data: The End of Privacy or a New Beginning?” (Friday, 9:00 a.m., McNally Amphitheatre) is a hot topic.
We’ve heard many of our authors discuss the challenges of explaining the principles of international law to those without training in it, so check out “Teaching International Law Outside Law Schools” (Friday, 10:45 a.m., Room 303)
Students should look out for the great career sessions on Saturday afternoon, ranging from human rights to art law.

Fordham Law School is located in the wonderful Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York and just around the corner from some great activities after the conference:

Head over to Lincoln Center to catch a symphony, an opera, or one of the many fantastic performances.
Jazz fans can head over to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola for amazing late-night sessions.
Forget something on your way to the conference? Check The Shops at Columbus Circle.
Have a relaxing stroll through Central Park.

Of course, we hope to see you at Oxford University Press booth. We’ll be offering the chance to browse and buy our new and bestselling titles on display at a 20% conference discount, discover what’s new in Oxford Law Online, and pick up sample copies of our latest law journals

To follow the latest updates about the ILW Conference as it happens, follow us on Twitter at @OUPIntLaw and the hashtag #ILW2013 for the latest updates about the ILW Conference as it happens.

See you in there!

Jo Wojtkowski is an Assistant Marketing Manager in the Law Division of Oxford University Press.

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Jo Ann Robinson and the importance of biography

By Robert Heinrich

Why think of American history in terms of biography? Perhaps most obviously, looking at individuals’ lives allows us to see behind the curtain of many of the great events and movements in American history. We not only learn more about those people rightly acknowledged for their accomplishments but we also rediscover those who, for various reasons, never received due credit.

Last August, Susan Ware, the general editor of the American National Biography (ANB), asked me to write an ANB entry for civil rights activist Jo Ann Robinson, one of the organizers and leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. I’d written my doctoral dissertation at Brandeis on Montgomery’s civil rights movement, and I was happy to represent Robinson in the ANB. I had no idea at the time that I would join its staff as assistant editor a year later. Robinson’s remarkable story epitomizes why I’m looking forward to working on the ANB: my belief in the importance of focusing on individual people when telling the story of American history.

Jo Ann Robinson lacks the name recognition of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., but she played a crucial role in mounting the struggle that today allows Montgomery to market itself as the “Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement.” (It also calls itself the “Cradle of the Confederacy,” an irony not lost on the city’s residents.) A professor of English at Alabama State College (now University), Robinson served as president of the Women’s Political Council, a civil rights organization formed by middle-class black women. The WPC, alongside local Pullman porter and NAACP activist E.D. Nixon, organized the boycott. When it came time to publicize the protest, being a college professor offered a practical benefit—Robinson could use Alabama State’s mimeograph machine to make flyers alerting local blacks to stay off the buses beginning on 5 December 1955. When Montgomery blacks decided to continue the boycott indefinitely, Robinson joined the new Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and edited its newsletter throughout the protest.

For me though, one of the most interesting things about studying the life of a notable person is learning what they did besides their claim to fame (such that it is). In Robinson’s case, taking a closer look at her life reveals a local civil rights movement that also occurred away from national media attention, before and after the famed boycott. The Women’s Political Council was active in community improvement beginning in 1949. It organized programs for local young people, and it encouraged blacks to attempt to register to vote by holding voter education workshops and staging mock elections. Eventually the WPC became the liaison between Montgomery blacks and the city government. When city leaders ignored their complaints about discrimination on the buses, WPC members mobilized for a boycott.

Jo Ann Robinson booking photo. Photo Courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Robinson did not view the civil rights struggle as ending with that bus boycott either. She continued to serve as MIA secretary and edit the organization’s newsletter for the next four years. Her life during that time reveals the difficulty Montgomery blacks faced fighting for their rights in spite of—or, perhaps more accurately, because of—their successful boycott. The city’s white supremacists remained militant. In 1957, Robinson participated in the meetings of a new interracial organization, the Fellowship of the Concerned, a group comprised of white and black churchwomen. Even though the Fellowship of the Concerned had no intention of planning any protest, whites viewed its existence alone as protest enough.  The editor of a white supremacist newspaper published the names of all of the attendees—as well as the names of their husbands, most of whom knew nothing about the meeting. Many white men, business owners in particular, encouraged their wives to affirm their commitment to white supremacy by dismissing the organization publicly. The Fellowship of the Concerned fizzled.

If local white supremacists were a difficult opponent for Robinson, the state government proved to be an insurmountable one. Alabama State students organized Montgomery’s first sit-ins in March 1960, and Governor John Patterson took a novel approach to meting out punishment: he not only expelled nine student leaders but also targeted activist faculty members for dismissal. Robinson had fought enough by that point. She resigned and, after a one-year detour at Grambling State in Louisiana, moved to Los Angeles. One of the most important figures in Montgomery’s civil rights struggle, Robinson, like Rosa Parks before her, left the city even before the Freedom Riders arrived in 1961.

In Los Angeles, Robinson took a job in the city schools, continuing to serve her community by teaching its children until her retirement in 1976. But she had one more major contribution to make to the story of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1987, she published The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, an invaluable account of the bus protest. Coming out the same year as the Eyes on the Prize documentary series, Robinson’s book underscored the breadth of the protest by introducing readers to an overlooked but absolutely integral aspect of the boycott: the near unanimous participation of Montgomery’s black women.

Looking at Robinson’s life allows us to better understand not only the famous bus boycott but also the ways in which relatively unknown local protests worked. Stories like hers force us to focus on the roles of individuals in all aspects of American history.

Robert Heinrich is an assistant editor on the American National Biography Online. He received his Ph.D in History from Brandeis University.

The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of more than 18,700 men and women — from all eras and walks of life — whose lives have shaped the nation. First published in 24 volumes in 1999, the ANB received instant acclaim as the new authority in American biographies, and continues to serve readers in thousands of school, public, and academic libraries around the world. Its online counterpart, ANB Online, is a regularly updated resource currently offering portraits of over 18,700 biographies, including the 17,435 of the print edition. ACLS sponsors the ANB, which is published by Oxford University Press.

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Sofia Gubaidulina, light and darkness

By Meghann Wilhoite

Today is the birthday of a composer who writes in a radically different musical style than many of us are accustomed to hearing on a day-to-day basis, as we sit on hold with the doctor’s office or hum along with the music piped into the aisles of the grocery store. Our composer today is one of those who writes in a language based more on texture and contour, much like you might hear in a dramatic film score; her name is Sofia Gubaidulina, and she was born 82 years ago today.

Raised in near poverty in Christopol, Russia, Gubaidulina has said in an interview that the bleakness of her childhood surroundings forced her to look up to the sky, which became for her a sort of playground for her imagination. Despite her beloved father’s staunch atheism and the communist antipathy towards religion, Gubaidulina formed deep religious roots at a very young age — she has said that she “recognized Christ” when encountering a religious iconic painting for the first time at the age of five. Her parents reacted strongly against this impulse, and, like many children, she learned to hide her “psychological experiences” from adults.

How should we expect the music of a person with this kind of background to sound? As a child who yearned for nature but whose yard contained not even a blade of grass, and whose spiritual tendencies became a treasured secret out of necessity, Gubaidulina became a composer who uses sound in distinctly unfamiliar ways to express powerful and lofty ideas. That is, out of hidden and transformative experiences came a musical voice that is anything but common. I mentioned texture as being part of her language, by which I mean both her emphasis on unusual combinations of instruments, as in this piece, Canticle of the Sun (1997), for mixed choir, cello, and various percussion instruments:

Click here to view the embedded video.

as well as her unconventional use of individual instruments to create certain sonic effects, as in the opening of De Profundis (1978) for bayan (a type of accordion):

Click here to view the embedded video.

I also mentioned contour, by which I mean the “direction” of the notes (this little video explains it pretty clearly), as in this clip of Gubaidulina’s Viola Concerto (1996), in which the violist jumps dramatically between low and high notes, gradually inching higher and thereby creating a sense of urgency before moving to the low notes and thereby slightly diffusing the tension:

Click here to view the embedded video.

All this to say that Gubaidulina, through the deft manipulation of texture and contour, as well as tone, rhythm, et al., has created works that communicate her “psychological experiences” in a way that can still be mutually intelligible to those of us more fluent in traditional tonalities: crunchy clusters from the bayan communicate a sort of primordial chaotic confusion, while rapid jumps between high and low in the viola communicate some acutely powerful emotional state. Much like abstract art, which can communicate a spectrum of ideas while eschewing recognizable forms, Gubaidulina’s music communicates to us the deepest reaches of her “intuition” (as she put it in this interview with Bruce Duffie) while eschewing recognizable musical constructs.

Blue and Green Music by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1921. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

With a career that has spanned over 50 years, Gubaidulina continues to be highly sought after for commissions, though I would like to see her music performed live more often than it is. Nonetheless, in honor of her birthday today check out my Spotify mini-playlist of her music:

Track listing (thanks to Onno van Rijen for detailed composition info)

“Light and Darkness” for organ (1976)

Duration: 5 minutes.


First performance on 21 May 1979 in Leningrad/St. Petersburg by Alexei Lyubimov (organ).

“Quasi Hoquetus” for viola, bassoon (or cello) and piano (1984/1985)

Dedicated to Mikhail Tolpygo, Valery Popov and Alexander Bakchiyev.


Duration: 15 minutes.


First performance on 16 January 1985 by Mikhail Tolpygo (viola), Valery Popov (bassoon) and Alexander Bakchiyev (piano).

“Glorious Percussion”, concerto for percussion ensemble and orchestra (2008)

Commissioned by Anders Loguin, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.


Duration: 38 minutes.


First performance on 18 September 2008 in Gothenburg by the Ensemble ‘Glorious Percussion’ and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

Fachwerk for strings (2009/2011)

Trondheim Symphony Orchestra Strings, Oyvind Gimse, conductor, Geir Draugsvoll, bayan, Anders Loguin, percussion

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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