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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Songs for a Sad Season

Singer-songwriter John Prine fell ill with the Covid-19 virus in March and eventually succumbed to it on April 7. He was a balladeer of the common man, a poet of everyday life with a knack for folding...

James Chandler | 13 May 2020

In Search for an Anchor: Using international law to discuss transitional governance

A common language and forum for debate on state transitions is essential today. Our age is indeed characterised by the increasing involvement of diplomatic actors in the constitutional and transitional...

Emmanuel H. D. De Groof | 13 May 2020

Hoarding in Times of Corona: Thoughts on Storage, Stuff, and the Future

Toilet paper has become the unlikely posterchild of the coronavirus. Toilet paper, and its absence. Much has been written about what seems, at first sight, an unlikely association: after all, diarrhea...

Astrid Van Oyen | 13 May 2020

South Africa

Tucked away in my North Yorkshire home, in the surreal tranquility of Newton-on-Ouse—since the floods of February and March a little welcome sunshine has brought out the bluebells to replace the daffodils...

David Attwell | 12 May 2020

Thursday

Last week my fifteen year old son wrote a short piece of fiction, entitled ‘Thursday’, that reflected on how strangely anonymous the days become when we are...

Peter Boxall | 12 May 2020

London

London, under the conditions of social isolation, has been turned inside out. Its centre is empty; its peripheries are full of people. The streets of the city’s suburbs, in the unseasonable...

Matthew Beaumont | 12 May 2020

Pandemic: All for Nothing? Or Learning Opportunity?

Sooner or later, our pandemic triggers a heartfelt question from its reflective victims: Why us? Of course, we can sketch a biological answer in terms of viral mutation and transmission, but that only...

Paul K. Moser | 12 May 2020

Waiting for the Zombies

For years Hollywood has been filming the viral apocalypse, and now at last we seem to be trapped in it—though our virus is not as fast-acting or as deadly as those on film. Nor is it as interesting...

H. Porter Abbott | 12 May 2020

Apocalypse Then and Now

“Isn’t this your moment?” ask my friends nowadays. “You’re a scholar of the apocalypse.” My work examines how American authors have written about the apocalypse and its aftermath, from...

John Hay | 12 May 2020

Mozart, Epidemics and Hope

I have always been fascinated by the imposing Pestsäule (Plague Column) in Vienna, erected by Emperor Leopold I soon after the plague epidemic of 1679 that killed as many as 75,000 people. Situated on...

Simon P. Keefe | 11 May 2020

In Light of Cancelled Creation, Haydn at Home

“Bombardment of Vienna on the night of the 12th of May [1809],” from the collections of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San José State University.

Sarah Day-O'Connell | 11 May 2020

New Orleans in Quarantine

New Orleans is never more lovely than in April. But this year, we’ll have no Jazz Fest – and we’ll have to get by without those rolling block parties we call second-line parades too; and without...

T. R. Johnson | 8 May 2020