Oxford University Press's Blog, page 956
April 15, 2013
The long, withdrawing roar of Matthew Arnold
By Jane Garnett
Matthew Arnold is probably now most recalled for one phrase, the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the Sea of Faith in his poem “Dover Beach” (first published in 1867), and for having written the lectures which were published serially and then in book form (1869) as Culture and Anarchy. Both are cited more than considered, and the nature of Arnold’s cultural project is often misunderstood. His poem is too readily taken as representative of a general crisis of faith, and his vision of culture has reductively been attached both to a conservative canon of English literature and to the educational arm of the welfare state. It has also been anachronistically and inappropriately absorbed into the “two cultures” science vs. humanities debate fuelled by C.P. Snow in the late 1950s. In fact, Arnold’s idea of culture was a much broader one, and was intended to be dynamic and dialogic. He identified the good of culture through refuting essentialisation of it. It was an approach, a habit of mind, rather than a subject area.
Anarchy, to Arnold, lay in lack of critical reflection. This led to the confusion of means and ends, and the privileging of the simple and dogmatic over the complex. He saw his contemporaries pursuing material wealth as an end in itself, and putting faith in the mechanisms by which government, society, churches, or industries operated, rather than reflecting on whether the machinery in fact activated or inhibited the underlying values which it should be serving. At a time when these values themselves were subject to debate, Arnold wanted people, rather than promoting or defending their individual or sectional interests, to think more about how the whole society could function harmoniously. His role as a critic was to help in developing criteria for action and to argue for culture as an active principle of engagement to combat anarchy.
On the one hand Arnold defined culture as an internal principle, a way of thinking, rather than as an external set of accomplishments or badge of prestige. Culture was a reflective process – a route towards perfection: “not a having and a resting, but a growing and a becoming.” This certainly involved intellectual self-development, including the development of an understanding of the will of God, as well as that of a moral and social passion for doing good. But the emphasis was on the ways in which the experience of contemplating perfection in these different registers — which he defined as sweetness and light/beauty and intelligence — would naturally enlarge and make flexible people’s minds. This was partly an argument for wider reading (which he personally regarded as a devotional discipline). He was also trying to make an imaginative case for exposing people to the narrownesses and complacencies of contemporary society. The serial publication meant that each essay was in part a response to the developing criticism. The side-swipes at particular critics, the conversational style, the accumulation and repetition of dialectical oppositions all represented a playing out of the critical purpose. The idea was to engage the reader in the tos and fros of the argument, to capture them in its immediacy.
On the other hand Arnold wanted to establish the fundamental importance of this conception of culture as the necessary basis for right action — as he put it, to make the will of God prevail. He argued that the English, especially in the mid-nineteenth century, were too practical, too inclined to act without thought, to confuse means and ends. His emphasis was on confronting difficulty, and here he cited Goethe: “to act is easy, to think is hard.” In returning again and again to this point, he was tackling accusations that the sort of cultural criticism which he was offering was impractical, dilettantish, even effeminate.
Like many of his contemporaries, he moved away from conventional dogmatic faith, but continued to frame his life religiously and to regard religious sympathy as culturally crucial. What he opposed was religion understood as mechanism or as sectional interest. Hence his critique of Protestant nonconformity, to which he was in many respects unfair, and of religious hypocrisy: the ways in which Protestantism could buttress materialism in the “gospel” of free trade economics. Analogously, he was not opposed to science or technology, but to scientism, to absolute claims made for scientific paths to truth. His repeated call was for cultural breadth of outlook and sympathy, and for constant vigilance as to the ways in which such breadth could be threatened by exaggerated particularism. Hence the different connotations (sometimes confusingly) attached to his critical terms in different contexts, when the cultural balance seemed to be tipping too far one way or another.
In celebrating the study of Celtic literature, Arnold commented: “I don’t want to find myself everywhere”. The power of his own interpretative lens somewhat distorted this aspiration. But precisely because his argument about culture and anarchy was intentionally unsystematic and suggestive, the core challenges identified — of pluralism vs. integration, of how to attain social and moral harmony, whilst incorporating the enriching force of cultural variety — remain fresh. How can tendencies to cultural introversion be modified without loss of positive energy? How can relativism be avoided and hegemonies resisted? How can religious seriousness be treated seriously in a plural society? Arnold’s terms of cultural incorporation were controversial in his day, but his embrace of the creative force of this controversy in literary form retains its capacity to sharpen critical questions today.
Jane Garnett, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History, Wadham College, Oxford, and editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold.
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 onTwitter and Facebook.
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Image credit: Matthew Arnold, Project Gutenberg eText 16745. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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Discovering the hermit in the garden
For many years, answering polite enquiries about my current book project was relatively easy: I could explain that it was about Milton, or the Bible, or Renaissance art and architecture, or the decorative arts, or whatever might be the topic, and the conversation could happily proceed to more interesting subjects. For the past few years, however, I have had to say that I was writing a book about ornamental hermits in eighteenth-century gardens. A few – very few – interlocutors have been able to say “ah yes”, either because they were good at bluffing or because they actually knew a little about garden hermits, but most have assumed politely that I had fallen off my trolley and was descending from cultural history into incoherent mutterings.
The hermitage at Brocklesby Park is of the type known as a root house.
I became interested in the subject some 40 years ago, when I chanced upon Edith Sitwell’s essay on “Ancients and Ornamental Hermits”. The idea of keeping an ornamental hermit in one’s garden was entirely new to me, and I certainly could not afford to engage one, but I did resolve to learn what I could about this phenomenon when I had time to do so. A professional career intervened, and so the idea marinated in my mind for decades before I could clear the space to undertake the requisite research. Finding the hermits and their hermitages was challenging, as ornamental hermits tend not to appear in the usual records, and hermitages are often overlooked in architectural histories. Mere facts, however, can often be uncovered by the dogged researcher. Understanding the phenomenon of the garden hermit has been a much more difficult task. At one level, ornamental hermits seem merely frivolous, but their existence hints at a complex and serious strain in Georgian culture.
Garden hermits were variously real people, automatons and wholly imagined people who had perpetually stepped out for a minute, leaving their eyeglasses and a book on the table of the hermitage. The most substantial material remains of these hermits are their hermitages, which are scattered across Britain and Ireland. At Brocklesby Park, the Lincolnshire seat of the Pelham family, the hermitage is of the type known as a root house, and what seems to be the original furniture survives inside, including a table made from a bole, a rustic hermit’s chair formed from branches, and four visitors’ chairs carved out of solid tree trunks. At Killerton, the Devonshire home of the Acland family (now National Trust), there is a luxury three-room hermitage known as the Bear’s Hut (which once accommodated a pet black bear brought from Canada); one of the rooms is the (imaginary) hermit’s chapel, which has a full-length lancet window inserted into a shaped tree trunk and fitted with Netherlandish painted glass panels.
The Bear’s Hut at Killerton.
Aspiring hermits could advertise their availability for employment. Similarly, landlords could advertise for hermits, though as Lady Croom (in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia) comments, “surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence”. One of my favourite hermits is the Reverend Henry White, whose day job was that of rector and schoolmaster at Fyfield, near Andover (Hampshire), but whose vocation as a young man was that of hermit to his brother Gilbert White, the author of The Natural History of Selborne. Henry was, like Gilbert, a naturalist and diarist, but he also happily donned the costume of a hermit to entertain Gilbert’s guests while they munched on the cantaloupe that he grew in his garden. In the summer of 1763 Gilbert White entertained the three daughters of an eminent physician at Selborne, and Henry the Hermit was regularly in sociable attendance. When one of the sisters had to leave, Henry lamented her departure in verse:
The hoary hermit in his calm retreat,
No longer safe from her resistless charms;
With trembling hand, dim eye, and faltering feet,
Sighs out his dotage o’er her snowy arms!
Henry so enjoyed playing the part of the ornamental hermit that he had himself painted in front of the hermitage; the painting now hangs at Dunham Massey, a National Trust property in Cheshire.
The fashion for the ornamental hermit has faded, but we still have human figures in our gardens. Indeed, one of the figures had has filled the void left by the ornamental hermit is the humble garden gnome, which has for many years suffered the ignominy of exclusion from the Chelsea Flower Show (gnomes are far too working-class for Chelsea), but nonetheless embodies a quiet dignity that recalls its heroic past as a human figure in the eighteenth-century landscape garden.
Gordon Campbell is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University of Leicester. His books for OUP include Bible: The Story of the King James Version, John Milton: Life, Work and Thought, and The Grove Encyclopedia of Northern Renaissance Art. His most recent book is The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome.
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Image credit: Images © Professor Gordon Campbell. Do not reproduce without permission.
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April 14, 2013
Signaling singleness: mating intelligence and Black Day
On the 14th of April, single Koreans will signal their singleness by wearing, eating, and experiencing “black” as a statement on the nature of being single.
From the perspective of mating intelligence, following mating-relevant customs that are specific to one’s culture is crucial in mating. Knowing the rules and showing others that you can play by these rules is a signal to others that you have your stuff together. On this day in South Korea the rules are as follows: if you’re single, you’re to publicly display this fact by eating, wearing, and experiencing black. Doing so shows that you know what the rules are and that you’re willing and able to play by them. Ultimately, such a signal is attractive to potential mates and such signaling may, ironically, be a key to attracting mates on Black Day.
A typical Black Day sadness bowl. Photo by egg™, Creative Commons License, via Wikimedia Commons.
From an evolutionary perspective, the nature of pairbonding is ultimately rooted in the costs associated with parenting that typify our species. According to Trivers’ parental investment theory, in species that have relatively altricial (helpless at birth) offspring, mating systems favor pairbonding to help bring multiple adult helpers to assist with the raising of young. And humans fit this model in spades. Pair-bonding, a form of reciprocal attachment, is observed among humans in romantic relationships across cultures and social structures. Although the norms found vary quite a bit across cultures, most cultures have some sort of institutionalized guidelines on pair-bonding (often overlaying with marriage in an extended pair-bond situation).
Buster Keaton and his wife, pair-bonding. Chicago Historical Society.
Many modern cultures now experience (and socially accept) higher rates of single parenting and individuals marrying later in life. However, evolutionarily speaking, being shut out of the mating game, or in the case of a female, waiting too long, is a dead end for reproductive success. As such, it makes sense that cultural norms would address the issue of being single (as cultural norms often pertain to evolutionarily important issues such as mating, parenting, how to treat others, and so forth). At the very core of the matter is what many consider to be the ideal: reciprocal attachment, or pair-bonding, and the stigma associated with a lack thereof. Thus, it may be possible to infer that cultural norms aimed at recognizing “singleness” actually help develop signals that assist individuals in engaging in mate-seeking strategies.
Black Day seems to be a culturally specific way to acknowledge this issue of being single. Not only to support those who are unattached, but also to call attention to “singleness,” which ultimately can help people plan for mating-relevant aspects of their future. Outwardly, the process of commiserating with other singles may appear to be a way of establishing a similar in-group experience as those who have found themselves in relationships. But it also has the possibility of being more. Events designed by and for singles may help these singles “signal” to other unattached individuals that they are ready, willing, and able to invest in pair-bonding behavior.
Like the peacock that displays his plumage for potential mates despite the risk of being quickly eaten by predators, single people unite during holidays such as Black Day to display their wares in hopes of finding a kindred soul. By outwardly participating in the rituals of the celebration, they potentially place themselves at risk of being scorned by the elite group of those who are attached, but the potential to reap the evolutionary benefits may outweigh the costs. Effectively navigating such decisions is a crucial part of human mating intelligence.
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Willing to be eaten for love. Peacock photo by Louise Docker (aussiegall), Creative Commons License, via Wikimedia Commons
In South Korea, donning all black clothing and going out to share the traditional comfort-food meal of noodles and black bean sauce could provide just the opportunity for single people to connect with others in the same position. These culturally specific customs provide an occasion for individuals to seek out and evaluate potential mates by engaging in a variety of evolutionarily based mating displays. In fact, in the absence of issues of mate-guarding, and potentially reduced intrasexual competition, singles on Black Day may have an even better chance at spending the next 14 April on the other side of the relationship fence.
Jessica Fell Williams is a Masters Student in Psychology at SUNY New Paltz and Strength Coach at Gunx CrossFit. Glenn Geher is the Director of Evolutionary Studies at SUNY New Paltz and Chair of Psychology; he’s also the co-author (with Scott Barry Kaufman) of Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love.
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Celebre a Semana Nacional da Biblioteca com a OUP
Celebre a Semana Nacional da Biblioteca com acesso gratuito ao OED e à Oxford Reference, disponível para todos na América do Norte e do Sul até 20 de abril. Acesse o site e use o
nome de usuário: libraryweek e a senha: libraryweek
para entrar e acessar tudo o que o site tem a oferecer. Todas as pessoas terão acesso através do mesmo logon, sem necessidade de registro. Estamos liberando essa quantidade inédita de conteúdo da OUP em agradecimento a todo o trabalho vital que os bibliotecários realizam para apoiar seus patronos e em celebração à semana que honra as bibliotecas.
O Oxford English Dictionary(Dicionário Oxford de Inglês) acompanha a evolução e o uso das palavras e é amplamente reconhecido como o registro mais competente e abrangente do idioma inglês. O Oxford English Dictionary Online (Dicionário Oxford de Inglês Online) oferece o conteúdo mais recente do Oxford English Dictionary completo, bem como o Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (Tesauro Histórico do OED). O OED Onlineinclui mais de 600.000 significados de palavras com mais de 3 milhões de citações, cobre o inglês britânico, americano e todas as variedades do inglês e é atualizado quatro vezes por ano com novas entradas.
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A Oxford Reference reúne mais de dois milhões de entradas em um único recurso de pesquisa cruzada, de referência de assunto, citação e dicionários de idiomas na coleção Oxford Quick Reference (Consulta Rápida Oxford) e nas premiadas publicações Oxford Companions e Encyclopedias na Oxford Reference Library..
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First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April.
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Celebre la Semana Nacional de Bibliotecas con OUP
Celebre la Semana Nacional de Bibliotecas con acceso gratuito al OED y Oxford Reference, disponible para América del Norte, del Sur y el Caribe hasta el 20 de Abril. Visite cualquiera de los sitios Web y utilice libraryweek como nombre de usuario y contraseña para acceder a todo el contenido que los sitios tienen que ofrecer. Todo el mundo tendrá acceso a través del mismo nombre de usuario y contraseña y no se requiere ningún registro.
Estamos librando el acceso a este contenido gracias al trabajo arduo y vital que los bibliotecarios realizan para apoyar a los usuarios y para celebrar esta semana honrando a las bibliotecas.
El Oxford English Dictionary describe la evolución y el uso de las palabras y es reconocido como el recurso más comprensivo y autoritario del idioma inglés. El Oxford English Dictionary Online brinda el contenido más reciente del Oxford English Dictionary al igual que el Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. El OED Online incluye más de 600,000 significados de palabras, utilizando 3 millones de citas y cubre todas las variedades del idioma inglés incluyendo el estadounidense y el británico, y es actualizado 4 veces al año con nuevas entradas.
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Oxford Reference reúne más de 2 millones de entradas en un sólo recurso, desde referencias temáticas, citas, y diccionarios de lenguajes en el Oxford Quick Reference a los galardonados Oxford Companions y enciclopedias en el Oxford Reference Library.
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First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April.
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Celebrate National Library Week with OUP
Celebrate National Library Week with free access to the OED and Oxford Reference, available to everyone in North and South America through the 20th of April. Visit either site and use
Username: libraryweek / Password: libraryweek
to login and access everything the sites have to offer. Everyone will have access through the same login and no registration of any kind is required.
We are freeing up this unprecedented amount of OUP content in thanks for all the vital work that librarians do to support their patrons and in celebration of the week honoring libraries. In addition, we’ll announce a contest just for librarians on Tumblr, which will bring attention to the events that libraries hold during National Library Week.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the evolution and use of words and is widely acknowledged to be the most authoritative and comprehensive record of the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary Online gives you the latest content of the full Oxford English Dictionary as well as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED Online includes more than 600,000 meanings of words using over 3 million quotations; coverage of British, American, and all varieties of English; and is updated 4 times a year with new entries.
Visit the OED National Library Week webpage for helpful tips on exploring the OED during this free week.
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Oxford Reference brings together over 2-million entries into a single cross-searchable resource, from subject reference, quotation, and language dictionaries in the Oxford Quick Reference collection to award winning Oxford Companions and Encyclopedias in the Oxford Reference Library.
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First sponsored in 1958, National Library Week is a national observance sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and libraries across the country each April.
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The 10th anniversary of the mapping of the human genome
“It’s like Star Wars,” a woman with the Huntington Disease mutation recently told me. This lethal gene had killed her relatives in every generation for hundreds of years, but she could now test her embryos to ensure that her children did not get it. “I don’t understand it all,” she told me, “but the peace of mind is huge.”
The fourteenth of April 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project — the successful mapping of the entire human genome, the three billion molecules that are the blueprints for us as human beings. This event ranks with NASA’s response to Sputnik as one of the great achievements of modern science supported by public funds. Over the past decade, researchers have continued to make incredible strides, discovering genes associated with diabetes, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other diseases. The future possibilities are enormous.
But we should use this anniversary as an opportunity to not only celebrate, but reflect. These miraculous discoveries present us too with countless dilemmas, and are far outpacing our abilities to grasp and address their ethical, legal, and social implications. The genome is far more complicated than anyone imagined. The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don’t know. Uncertainties and controversies abound.
Mice have about 20,000 genes. Hence, scientists initially thought humans must have at least 50,000 to 150,000. In fact, we have about the same number as rodents and flies. We share 99.9% of our genes with each other, 80% with dogs, and 69% with chickens. Rice has more genes than do humans (46,000) since our system is more parsimoniously designed.
Over the past 10 years, the costs of sequencing a human genome have also plummeted from $100 million per person to less than $1,000. Thus, more people are getting sequenced and medical centers are trying to gather and store this information on as many patients as possible in huge biobanks. These data can help researchers find genes associated with diseases and successful treatments. Eventually, doctors will be able to choose certain medications for each of us based on our unique genomes, so-called “personalized medicine”.
Yet genetic discoveries can also be patented, earning hundreds of millions of dollars for private companies, and sometimes universities. Myriad Genetics, for instance, owns the patents for the breast cancer genes, and charges over $3,000 for these tests. Unfortunately as a result, millions of women around the world cannot afford them.
For patients who can pay, doctors can now use genetic tests to screen embryos and fetuses for ever more diseases. Some patients can eliminate certain deadly mutations, such as that for Huntington’s, from their descendants. But doctors and patients increasingly face quandaries regarding which diseases to test for and remove. Many physicians and patients are, for instance, screening out embryos with a breast cancer mutation, though these genes wouldn’t cause symptoms until adulthood, and would do so only about 50% of the time.
The wealthy are thus eliminating certain diseases from their descendants, while the poor cannot, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Parents may soon, for instance, abort fetuses that have a 20% chance of developing autism. Some doctors say they will in the near future be able to select embryos that will have blond hair and blue eyes. This billion-dollar industry is largely unregulated by the government. As a society, we are thus confronting quandaries of whether federal or state governments or professional medical organizations should ban some of the practices, and if so, which and how.
Unfortunately, understanding of genetics among physicians, patients, and policymakers also remains low. Media headlines still announce “The Fat Gene”, “The IQ Gene”, “The Gay Gene” and “The God Gene”. Beliefs in “genetic essentialism” persist (that single genes cause common diseases and traits). In fact, most lethal mutations cause only very rare diseases. Common diseases such as diabetes and asthma appear to result from complex interactions of multiple genetic and environmental factors. The human genome evolved to resist the effects of single lethal mistakes. Multiple, not single, genetic errors are usually needed to kill us.
In addition, most doctors don’t fully understand how to incorporate genetics into practice, and may over- or under- order tests. Doctors who graduated medical school before the Human Genome Project started differ markedly from later graduates.
Genetic discrimination also perseveres, at times fueled by misunderstandings. The 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (or GINA) covers health insurance, but not disability, life or long-term care insurance. Some patients still face subtle discrimination at work too, e.g. passed over for promotion because they have a mutation.
Other controversies continue as well, from how many genetic tests to perform on pregnant women and newborns, to whether genetically modify more animals and plants.
On this anniversary, we should celebrate the incredible advances of the past 10 years, but we should also begin to prepare ourselves for the next decade. No one could have foreseen how far science has progressed. What seemed science fiction is now reality. Yet we now need not only research, but more public and professional education about it, and attention to how it is and should affect our lives. Sputnik prompted the federal government to support not only research, but science education, putting billions of dollars in our educational system.
The science of genetics is evolving more quickly than our understanding of it. We need to strive further to keep up.
Robert Klitzman, MD, is a professor of clinical psychiatry, director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University, and the author of Am I My Genes?: Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing.
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Image credit: (1) Blue strip of DNA. Image by cre8tive_studios, iStockphoto. (2) Author photo courtesy of Columbia University
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April 13, 2013
Mark Roodhouse on the black market
From cigarettes to knockoffs, what’s available on the black market? Lecturer in modern history Mark Roodhouse investigates the illegal trade in counterfeit and stolen goods in Britain from the interwar period to today. And there’s always a boom in the underground economy when austerity measures hit, whether with “losses of goods in transit” during the Second World War or horsemeat discovered in packaged meals in 2013. Most 1940s black marketers weren’t serious criminals but struggling retailers, dealing with everyone from organized criminal gangs to someone on the breadline just trying to make ends meet. Today, people wish to maintain their lifestyle in straitened circumstances, fueling demand for illegal goods.
Mark Roodhouse speaks with BBC Wiltshire’s Mid-Morning Show about the history of the black market.
[See post to listen to audio]
(c) BBC Wiltshire
Dr Mark Roodhouse is a Lecturer in History at the University of York. He studied history at Cambridge and Oxford before arriving at York, where he teaches modern British history. Mark is currently writing his second book about organised crime in mid-twentieth-century Britain. His first book is Black Market Britain: 1939-1955, published by Oxford University Press. Read his previous blog post “Eating horse in austerity Britain.”
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April 12, 2013
Friday procrastination: Webby honoree edition
Thank you to our wonderful contributors, staff, and most of all readers. OUPblog is one of nine 2013 Webby honorees in the ‘Blog – Cultural’ category. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be alongside the New Yorker‘s Page-Turner and Perez Hamilton. And further congratulations to the Oxford Islamic Studies Online team or their Religion & Spirituality Websites nomination and the Oxford Music Online team for their Best Writing (Editorial) honor. The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences acknowledges outstanding Webby Awards entries as Official Honorees, alongside their Nominees. With 11,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries, the Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered. Honorees are selected for recognition based on excellence in content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience. Now please get out and vote for Oxford Islamic Studies Online!
How your blog editor reacts to Webby honoree news:
Source: gif.tv
Does access to firearms increase likelihood of suicide?
Judging people by the technology terms they use.
Weird words for taxes. *tithe did not make the list
The Riot Grrl collection to be released in book form.
If only Georges Seurat had bubble wrap…
How libraries respond to disaster.
What are the best working hours for doctors?
Occupy Wall Street Library wins suit.
Americans still love libraries.
Can someone make a program so that track changes looks more like this?
Religion versus atheism in package delivery.
So where do those tuition fees go?
Advice for young graduates: big data is trendy, do that.
British Library to archive the UK web.
Business history is a thing now. [Psst. Young capitalist historians. We publish Enterprise & Society on behalf of the Business History conference.]
Your web friends aren’t your friends.
Typographic sculptures and matchstick men.
Your profile picture and revolution.
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Adeline Koh speaks with Duke UP’s Ken Wissoker.
What we can learn from medieval scribes.
Commas are rather wonderful when used properly.
There are no nerds in China.
The British Library’s Curators’ 100.
Testing the hygiene hypothesis.
Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.
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The Mashapaug Project
Mashapaug Pond, Yoyatche Mehquantash – Always Remember by Loren Spears. Used with permission of the photographer.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
Continuing our celebration of the release of 40.1, today we’re excited to share a conversation between managing editor Troy Reeves and contributors Anne Valk and Holly Ewald. Valk and Ewald are the authors of, “Bringing a Hidden Pond to Public Attention: Increasing Impact through Digital Tools,” which describes the origins and methods of the Mashapaug Project, a collaborative community arts and oral history project on a pond in Providence, Rhode Island. Through the course of their conversation with Troy, Valk, and Ewald demonstrate how we may push the definition and impact of oral history work.
Those interested in public art and public humanities should also be sure to give this a listen!
[See post to listen to audio]
Anne Valk is Associate Director of Programs at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. Her book Living with Jim Crow: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated South (Palgrave Press, 2010), written with Leslie Brown, won the Oral History Association Book Award in 2011. Holly Ewald is an artist who works within the context of public spaces, and with the people who inhabit and treasure those places. As founder of Urban Pond Procession, she encourages other artists to use the historical and environmental challenges of Mashapaug Pond to engage the public in creative responses to this neglected site. Through Our Eyes, An Indigenous View of Mashapug Pond (2012), a book she co-edited with Dawn Dove, was the culmination of a project with an intergenerational Indigenous group at the Tomaquag Museum in Rhode Island.
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 and like them on Facebook to preview the latest from the Review, learn about other oral history projects, connect with oral history centers across the world, and discover topics that you may have thought were even remotely connected to the study of oral history. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on the OUPblog for addendum to past articles, interviews with scholars in oral history and related fields, and fieldnotes on conferences, workshops, etc.
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