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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Coining Meaning: Melville, Money, and American Literature

For anyone interested in the crucial role of money in American literature, it cannot seem anything other than eminently fitting that at the very “navel” of the vessel at the centre of the greatest...

Paul Crosthwaite | 21 Jul 2025

Why were ancient Christians enslaved to God?

Slavery was an inextricable part of Christianity from its origins. Within the earliest gatherings of Jesus-followers in the eastern Mediterranean, enslaved persons and enslavers read sacred texts...

Chance E. Bonar | 21 Jul 2025

From Data to Discovery: Your Complete Guide to Mastering Sociolinguistic Variation Analysis

Have you ever heard someone say: I hate it when people say ‘___’? When a sociolinguist hears that kind of comment, they take it as a good indication there’s something interesting going on. This...

Sali A. Tagliamonte | 17 Jul 2025

“Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars and Why the Sky is NOT Falling”

My new book, _Untied Hands: How States Avoid the Wrong Wars_ opposes conventional wisdom in in international relations scholarship.  Contra widespread thinking, it proposes that states do not “tie...

Dan Reiter | 17 Jul 2025

Celebrating the Illustrative Career of Jay Belsky in Evolutionary Developmental Psychology

To call Jay Belsky a pioneer or trailblazer would be a gross understatement.  He was an evolutionary psychologist before there was evolutionary psychology, and he was an evolutionary developmental...

Satoshi Kanazawa | 15 Jul 2025

From “Eating Bitterness” to “Lying Flat”: China’s New Generation of Migrant Workers

The rise of the gig economy and precarious labor has caught both academic and media attention. What happens to the largest workforce in the world? The over 200-million rural-to-urban migrant workers have...

Xiaoshuo Hou | 15 Jul 2025

Borders and long-term change in international order

Today the international order appears to be falling apart. War in Eastern Europe is continuing to escalate, militarism is on the rise in Western Europe, and the USA seems to be increasingly disinterested...

Kerry Goettlich | 11 Jul 2025

Mapping the World: How Cartography Shaped Global Science

In 1785, King Louis XVI of France commissioned Jean François de Galoup, comte de Lapérouse, to explore the Pacific Ocean, seeking to bolster French scientific prestige and imperial ambitions. The Académie...

Florin-Stefan Morar | 10 Jul 2025

Introducing A first course in Magnetohydrodynamics

Summary: A First Course in Magnetohydrodynamics offers a much-needed resource for undergraduate physics education.  Despite the fact that magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD) can be used to describe more than...

David Alan Clarke | 8 Jul 2025

Handbook of Compassion in Healthcare: A Practical Approach

We are medical doctors, psychiatrists, working in a world of infinite need, finite resources, and – increasingly – ‘evidence-based medicine’. We are trained to ask questions such as: What is the...

Brendan Kelly, Caragh Behan | 7 Jul 2025

Plan? What plan?

Sometimes plans work best when they don’t really bear the hallmarks of a plan. Less design and more muddling through can achieve unforeseen good. This might be said for a well-known, but less well-understood,...

David Lowe | 2 Jul 2025

Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change

Exiting from international organizations (IOs) seems to be the strategy du jour in international relations. This is underscored by recent high-profile events: the implementation of Brexit in 2020, Russia’s...

Inken von Borzyskowski, Felicity Vabulas | 1 Jul 2025