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Fifteen Eighty Four

Academic perspectives from Cambridge University Press

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Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

Our knowledge of Shakespeare in English-speaking countries has been shaped mostly by classroom instruction and to a much lesser extent by a few breakthrough films and live theater performances. His resulting...

Ian Smith | 10 Nov 2022

The Fragility of Political Orders

The relative robustness and fragility of political orders is a central concern of scholars and political elites alike. Our edited volume is the first to address the assessments of robustness...

Ludvig Norman, Richard Ned Lebow | 9 Nov 2022

Freud’s Publish-and-Perish Religion

I set out to write a book on Freud’s enduring legacy on religion and ended up writing one on the founding years of psychoanalytic journals. I recall this transition as marked by the dawning awareness...

Maya Balakirsky Katz | 9 Nov 2022

Understanding Human Metabolism: Fat metabolism is just like making soap

Olive oil was first produced somewhere around 4000 BC.  Now we have a range of vegetable and animal fats available – sunflower, safflower, rapeseed, beef suet, butter and others.  Chemically...

Keith Frayn | 9 Nov 2022

When surgery really hurt

‘Detail of the manipulation of the scalpel in order to make incisions’ from J. M. Bourgery and N. H. Jacob, Atlas d’anatomie humaine et de chirurgie (1831-54), vol. 1, plate 15. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark’.

Michael Brown | 8 Nov 2022

Talking in Clichés: The Use of Stock Phrases in Discourse and Communication.

A love letter to clichés Why did we write a monograph on clichés? On clichés, for heaven’s sake! Doesn’t everyone avoid them like the plague? Rolling their eyes whenever anyone runs one...

Derek Bousfield, Stella Bullo | 8 Nov 2022

Authoritarianism: a force unchained?

Authoritarian government seems to be a rising force. Over 40 countries are presently autocratic with around 55% of the world’s population living under some form of authoritarian regime. At the same...

Simon Commander, Saul Estrin | 8 Nov 2022

Performing Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution, which began with slave uprisings in the French colony of Saint Domingue in 1791 and resulted in the 1804 declaration of Haitian independence, was a major part of the Age of Revolutions. ...

Peter Reed | 7 Nov 2022

When is a Villa like a Hawk?

The Renaissance theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti imagined houses as living beings: when they are happy they welcome you to their ‘bosom’, the central hall; when they are badly sited they...

James Grantham Turner | 4 Nov 2022

Is alien life similar to Earth life?

The phrase “life, but not as we know it” is often encountered in science fiction. But what of reality? Should we expect life-forms on other planets to be like variants of life on Earth, or should...

Wallace Arthur | 3 Nov 2022

Art before museums, galleries, the press, and the internet. How did artistic exchange work in the medieval Mediterranean?

The medieval Mediterranean was a sea of exchange of cultures, religions, commodities, and worldviews. With a focus on monumental and panel painting, Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange in the Medieval...

Anthi Andronikou | 3 Nov 2022

Relativity applications in radiation and plasma physics

Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity using “thought experiments’’ to illustrate the consequences of a constant speed of light.  Many measurements have validated Einstein’s...

Greg Tallents | 2 Nov 2022