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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Teaching mathematics to physicists — can we do better?

It is interesting to reflect upon how physics – a science heavily dependent on the language of mathematics – trains its future generations in that discipline. The role of mathematics in physics has...

Alexander Altland, Jan von Delft | 21 Jan 2019

How can the Second Amendment inform US gun regulation?

An introduction to "The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller" by its authors Joseph Blocher & Darrell A.H. Miller.

Joseph Blocher, Darrell A.H. Miller | 17 Jan 2019

Shakespeare as Fan Fiction

“Shipping” (from “relationship”) is a phenomenon within the wider culture of fan fiction that places characters (or the actors who play them) from a particular cultural world into a romantic relationship....

Travis D. Williams | 16 Jan 2019

Emotional Worlds: Beyond an Anthropology of Emotion

My inaugural, ghost-written speech to the Niha – learned rote and recited to massed tribesmen over a bloody carpet of pigmeat – ended with the resonant phrase, There is no resentment! It took...

Andrew Beatty | 16 Jan 2019

Human rights talk has obscured the devastating effects of counterterrorism

Since the dramatic events of September 11, 2001 which ushered in the “War on Terror”, there’s been a gradual change in how state officials, experts and international human rights advocates of various...

Jayson S. Lamchek | 15 Jan 2019

Campus Sexual Assault Shouldn’t be a Partisan Issue

In November 2018, the Department of Education released new proposed Title IX regulations, replacing Obama era guidance on how educational institutions should handle allegations of sexual assault and sexual...

Evan Gerstmann | 14 Jan 2019

The Bird Box and Jim Crow

It was reported that at least 45 million people watched the 2018 Netflix movie “Bird Box” in its first week. I was one of them (spoiler alert). The film focuses on a dystopian society in which a woman...

Sandra L. Barnes | 11 Jan 2019

Has the Left Killed Satire?

Writing a big book makes you wary of generalizations.  My new book, The Cambridge Introduction to Satire, discusses satire from Lysistrata to The Daily Show, and if there’s one thing I discovered in...

Jonathan Greenberg | 11 Jan 2019

Accelerated Times? From The Romans in Britain (1980) to the Millennium Bug

‘Have you ever been in a car crash? Unfortunately, unlike the car crash, time will not slow down for us. If anything, we’re accelerating toward disaster’[1] It was the question of whether or not...

Berthold Schoene, Eileen Pollard | 9 Jan 2019

Is Brexit a ‘crusade’?

The political and economic agenda of the United Kingdom has been dominated for the last two years by the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum. A few days after the referendum, in which 52% of voters voted...

Anthony Bale | 8 Jan 2019

Africa’s Precolonial History: A Decentered View on the Kongo Kingdom

The ancient Kongo kingdom in West-Central Africa has attracted much attention. Usually the study of its history starts with the arrival of Portuguese navigators at the end of the fifteenth century in the...

Koen Bostoen, Inge Brinkman | 4 Jan 2019

Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War

While accessing oral histories and autobiographical writings about Indigenous participation in the Second World War, I had a strange epiphany: very few firsthand accounts ever explicitly explained why...

Noah Riseman, R. Scott Sheffield | 4 Jan 2019