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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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How US and European ‘democracy promotion’ in Jordan ends up reinforcing authoritarianism

While Jordan is one of the main targets of US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’, it also demonstrates a remarkably stable authoritarian system. Existing literature on ‘democracy promotion’...

Benjamin Schuetze | 11 Feb 2020

NATO’s London Summit: Intra-alliance Opposition and Silver Linings

Oya Dursun-Özkanca, author of 'Turkey–West Relations," out now, on the recent NATO Summit.

Oya Dursun-Özkanca | 10 Feb 2020

The Conflict between Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation: How can it be Solved?

Martin Drechsler, author of 'Ecological-Economic Modelling for Biodiversity Conservation', discusses how we can help solve the conflict between agriculture and biodiversity conservation. Photo by 童 彤 on Unsplash

Martin Drechsler | 7 Feb 2020

Temporary Marriage in Iran: Gender and Body Politics in Modern Iranian Film and Literature

It was a decade ago in graduate school when I read Shahla Haeri’s magnificent book, Law of Desire, for the first time. Haeri’s book became the inspiration for a series of papers, conference presentations,...

Claudia Yaghoobi | 7 Feb 2020

Higher Education Admissions Practices

The new year brings with it wishes for health and happiness. But for many secondary school students, the beginning of the year also brings anxiety about completing college applications, apprehension waiting...

Cathy Wendler | 7 Feb 2020

Long Live Beatlemania

The following text is excerpted from chapter 8 of The Beatles in Context (ed. by Kenneth Womack), ‘Beatlemania,’ by Melissa Davis. Beatlemania: biːt (ə) lˈmeɪnɪə/ From Gr (noun) mania...

6 Feb 2020

Who Benefits?

What can musical benefits tell us about the ecology of performance in eighteenth-century Britain? Why did musical benefits become such an integral part of a performer’s work in the eighteenth century?...

Alison DeSimone, Matthew Gardner | 5 Feb 2020

Poetry and Language

People who love poetry are not likely to love these sorts of thing:  ˌɪntərˈnæʃənəl fəˈnɛtɪk ˈælfəbɪt VP   ->   t (M) (have + prf) (be + prg) V *h2ner-seerg ...

Michael Ferber | 3 Feb 2020

Tiny Things and Why We Love Them (and what they do to us…)

Why do people adore tiny things? From souvenir keychains to dollhouses, Christmas ornaments to refrigerator magnets, the act of shrinking a life-size thing to a smaller scale has an influential effect....

Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper | 3 Feb 2020

THE AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH: A HISTORY

As an awe-struck adolescent in attendance at the 1962 Pittsburgh Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, I saw Bishop Richard R. Wright, Jr., a scholarly protégé of W. E. B. Du Bois....

Dennis C Dickerson | 31 Jan 2020

Moneyball for the Huddled Masses

In a thought-provoking piece in Politico Magazine , Professor Justin Gest proposes a “Moneyball Fix” for America’s immigration system.  Taking a page out of sports analytics, he suggests that...

Matthew Wright, Morris Levy | 30 Jan 2020

Sing to Me Muse…

Where do the Iliad and Odyssey come from? The story of these ancient epic poems is a “complicated” one (to borrow Emily Wilson’s inspired translation of the Homeric epithet polytropos, a word that...

Corinne Ondine Pache, Casey Due, Susan Lupack, Robert Lamberton | 30 Jan 2020