Humanities

Tara Brabazon on a study examining the concept and forms of liveness in media studies

Shahidha Bari on a rich account of all the voices that shaped and reshaped the Arabian Nights

Book of the week: The perennial female fantasy of man embodies a host of contradictory types, says Laura Frost

Ulrike Zitzlsperger on how international media coverage of the end of a physical divide shaped the narrative and the meaning of the event

Far from passive responders to capitalism, women were involved from the start, Victoria Bateman says

During a hospital stay, Emily Michelson learned why the humanities and sciences are in no way opposites

Tracey Warr on a pair of masters who, with ethereality and earthiness, respectively, puts the captivatingly quotidian on canvas 

Kate Macdonald on a study of how garments changed their wearers in early 20th-century Britain

Hear all about it: René Wolf listens in for chapter and verse on the history and art of the audiobook

Anti-Semitism was a key pillar of the carefully built cult of Marian worship, says Rachel Moss

Britain got sober patriotism, purpose and more from its post-war leader, says Gordon Marsden

Book of the week: The scrutiny to which two intellectuals submit their relationship fascinates Shahidha Bari

Martin Cohen on a study that strives to position a much-quoted thinker as a social geographer

Vice-principal tells SRHE annual conference that arts and humanities scholars cannot suddenly shift area of focus to different cultural settings 

Shelley King is happy to linger over an erudite, witty and intimate journey through Wonderland

As we cannot cut the cords tethering us to tech, we must fully grasp the connection, says John Gilbey

A study focused on Singapore’s Biopolis centre concentrates on various global ‘currents’ in bioscience, says Flora Samuel

Provost of Universitas 21 tells THE summit that universities must engage with institutions outside their elite groups

UK universities can now ‘feel confident’ in recruiting postgraduate students for 2017-18, says RCUK chair

Shahidha Bari on an idiosyncratic and tantalising inward-looking exercise in soulful diary-keeping

Tristan Bekinschtein lauds a Nobel laureate’s fusion of art interpretation and analysis with the internal mechanisms by which we see works of art

Are our mental faculties really too unevolved to keep us afloat in an ocean of digital distraction? asks Shane O’Mara

The tale of a shocking killing falls short as true crime and as social history, says Sharon Wheeler

All the spoken and unspoken desires in one household are unveiled in a study of their prolific, and introspective, writings, says Jane Shaw

President of VU Amsterdam says it is not enough for institutions merely to say they are valuable

Book of the week: From the black stuff to books, who gets the goods in a sharing and streaming era? asks Paul Bernal

June Purvis on an engaging study of the doughty pioneers who swapped Edwardian life for the front line

London as an eco-village? Treehouses in Accra? Danny Dorling lauds beautiful and bold what-ifs

Book of the week: Political Svengalis, not the public, drive populist pantomimes of democracy, says Angelia Wilson

Has the corporation acted as an arm of the state in the past, and might it in the future? Ivor Gaber wonders

A.W. Purdue on the man whose narcissism led to his becoming a mouthpiece for the Nazis

Duncan Wu on the art of biography

Book of the week: New sources yield fresh insights and oversights by the father of psychoanalysis, says Janet Sayers

Karen Harvey on a cultural history of sexuality that attempts to put real people centre stage

Martin Cohen on the philosophical implications of living the simple life – and owning a homemade toilet-brush holder

Cheap taxis come at a price but remodelling the online marketplace is an option, says Kylie Jarrett

A study offers a new perspective on one of the most important yet elusive Jewish thinkers of the past century

Book of the week: A memoir wrestles with moral questions about using animals in research. Kristin Andrews writes

A clear-eyed study of shiny and new inventions calls for better oversight, says Richard Joyner

Clare Griffiths on a study that recovers the complexities of the lives of six individuals who lived their principles

The university professor and former political prisoner compares his own iconoclastic impulses to Rhodes Must Fall movement

Taking an unconventional route after studying for a doctorate should not be seen as a failure, says Fiona Whelan

Student artists at Staffordshire University have transformed academic research on graduate debt into a full-length comic

National brutality has taken many twists and turns but domestic savagery endures, finds Dick Hobbs

William Kolbrener on a study of the tales that centre on a place that is both a real Polish city and an imaginary realm

Once upon a time, authors pushed young readers to see the world very differently, says Shelley King

A controversial philosopher turns his mind to subjects ranging from happiness and euthanasia to vegetarianism, incest and doping, says Jane O’Grady

Seneca meets The Sopranos in a lively who, what, when, where and why of cursing, says Tom Palaima

Clare Griffiths on a study of the whirlwind life of the flame-haired Labour minister

Helen Berry on the socio-economic and political drivers behind consumer culture in colonial America

Catherine Clinton on the legacy of a marginalised group in a supposedly class-free society

A. W. Purdue on the suffering of populations of multi-ethnic empires in the years after the Great War

Elizabeth Greene on a study focusing on the American artist’s use of verse in his work

Book of the week: Hillegonda Rietveld on the fierce creative energy of Big Apple clubs in the early Eighties

Eight subject rankings reveal elite group of 14 US and European universities thriving across disciplines

Emma Rees is happily lost in a Sixties’ soundscape but wonders why there are so few female artists

Book of the week: Rachel Bowlby tracks the impact of a strange and foreign novel across languages and culture

Tales of marooned mariners helped Britain to see itself as a global power, A. W. Purdue hears

Holistic admissions offer a level of fairness that traditional academic criteria alone cannot provide, and it is a new approach in Singapore, writes Kristen Lynas

From Fox News to the race for the White House, this work is all about politics, says Sharon Wheeler