Literature

Video conferencing is a reasonable substitute for lectures, but that is where it must end, say Robert Zaretsky and George Alliger

Sexism, unthinking managerialism and toxic ‘them and us’ attitudes are still pervasive within UK universities, according to an anonymous academic who found the dissonances between her values, career expectations and lived reality too much to bear

Gail Marshall considers a wide-ranging exploration of readers’ desire to find life lessons in books of many kinds

Rachel Moss is both amazed and puzzled by a vast new study of a giant of world literature

Robert Zaretsky is troubled by his students’ refusal to see any nuance in a historical text that contains racial slurs  

Bryan Cheyette welcomes a comparative study of those persecuted under Stalin and Hitler despite its gaps

Jane O’Grady is intrigued by an analysis of the psychological depths plumbed by the fiction of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy 

Andrew Palmer is unimpressed by a critic whose style falls far short of the writer he so admires

Book of the week: Rosa Mucignat enjoys a bold attempt to create a cooperative open-ended discussion about a publishing phenomenon

Charlotte Jones is fascinated by a bold attempt to link mathematical innovations with developments in Victorian fiction

Robert Eaglestone risks getting a bit ‘meta’ in reviewing a book about the failures of reviewers

Tributes paid to Irish expert on French literature who ‘recognised languages as a key to future opportunities in Europe’

Giulia Miller has mixed feelings about an ambitious but confusing analysis of animation’s engagement with atrocity

Lisa Hopkins enjoys an ingenious analysis of the ways that ‘discourses of mapping’ influenced attitudes to gender

Hetta Howes is impressed by a bold attempt to recover the words of long-forgotten women

Charlotte Jones enjoys an account of a hugely ambitious writer who challenges many of our assumptions about studying literature 

Book of the week: Andrew Palmer is impressed by a bold survey of literature on both sides of the Iron Curtain

Gail Marshall applauds an intriguing study of the relations between Charles Darwin, George Eliot and Charles Dickens 

Book of the week: Robert Eaglestone is fascinated by a bold attempt to break down the barriers between literary critics and ‘ordinary readers’

Eleanor Lybeck explores the striking links between ‘textual overproduction’ in the 19th century and today

Tributes paid to ‘a brilliant, warmly sympathetic scholar-critic’ whose experience of war informed his work

Sophie Read enjoys a vivid account of how four women who met at Oxford before the First World War went on to forge lives and careers for themselves

The author of The Fire Is upon Us on childhood obsessions, racial identity and the power of primary sources

Leo Mellor is impressed by a bold reinterpretation of British culture in the middle of the past century

Emma Rees is unconvinced by an attempt to shed new light on sexual conflict in the Bard’s works

Robert Eaglestone praises a bold attempt to reveal how much of our moral thinking is still conducted in the shadow of the ancient Greeks

Miryam Sivan questions an attempt to show that the image of the traumatised soldier was used to cleanse the American army of its guilt

Writer inspired by her childhood experiences of ‘belonging and not belonging’ is honoured alongside Margaret Atwood

Martin Dyar applauds an analysis of the ways poetry has ingeniously adapted itself to cultural change

Charlotte Jones enjoys an account of early English fiction exploring what novelists made of their naive unworldly heroines

Universities rightly make every effort to protect learners’ feelings. But what about teachers’ feelings, asks Alice Wickenden 

The pursuit of impact remains controversial, but it has opened doors to more varied careers, says Andrew McRae

This autumn Chestnut Hill College will host one of the world’s most unusual annual academic conferences

Robert Eaglestone is thrilled by an intellectual tour de force

Book of the week: Clare Brant enjoys a lively account of a turning point in British history

A significant minority of tenured faculty spend their lives undermining others when they could be working for progressive change, argues Douglas Dowland

As in the UK and the US, universities face questions about whether their curricula feature enough non-white voices

Tributes paid to a poet and scholar of medieval literature who ‘rendered the world brighter’

Even in disciplines in which research is inherently inexpensive, ‘grant capture’ is increasingly being adopted as a metric to judge academics and universities. But with success rates typically little better than one in five, rejection is the fate of most applications. Six academics give their tips on how to improve the odds

Tom McLeish delves into the complex relations between scientific and poetic creativity

Gail Marshall applauds an impressive analysis of our changing images of Japan

Book of the week: Leo Mellor assesses a bold attempt to make the case for literature and criticism in the light of environmental disaster

Ben Higgins enjoys a richly detailed account of the 17th-century Europe’s ‘most important centre of print’

Sarah Peverley thrills to a lavish overview of the strange world of bestiaries

Peter J. Smith raises a glass to ‘conviviality’ in life and literature

Lisa Hopkins applauds a ‘woke’ look at the gaps in Shakespeare’s plays

Book of the week: Robert Eaglestone praises a dazzlingly wide-ranging analysis of the choices we don’t make

The literature expert on online abuse, decolonising the curriculum and Cambridge’s role in the slave trade

Charlotte Jones considers the arguments that much pioneering modernist art and literature didn’t really deserve to be taken seriously

Mary Wellesley is impressed by ‘a new kind of biography’ of a giant of medieval literature

Tributes paid to ‘gentlemanly’ scholar of folklore, fairy tales and fantasy fiction

The literature expert on what Spain makes of the Gothic, what we can learn from ‘mad scientists’ and struggles with his surname

Farah Mendlesohn considers a study of fantasy that ranges across a wide spectrum of genres

Catherine Butler salutes a bold attempt to rethink how children might respond to literature

Jess Cotton is not totally convinced by an account of the links between literature and state funding and nationalism

Tributes paid to leading scholar of French colonial history

Jeffrey Meyers considers a new account of one of the most talented generations in English literature

Those on the ground are often able to recognise the folly of supposed efficiency measures imposed from on high, writes Peter Barry

Jenni Ramone takes up the invitation to be a fearless reader of multilayered texts

In these days of virtual learning environments, face-to-face classes promote the endangered art of meaningful human interaction, says Joe Moran