Art

To crib from Oscar Wilde, the only thing worse than being caricatured is not being caricatured. For decades, and indeed centuries, British democracy has been accompanied by a lively press free (within certain legal safeguards) from censorship. This has enabled people to say what they thought at the time, however offensive that my seem to twenty-first century sensibilities; not only say, but also draw, since the art of the modern political cartoon can be traced back to the baw

Professor Brooke Holmes is a scholar, theorist, and writer. She is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Classics at Princeton University, where she is also Director of the Gauss Seminars in Criticism, a 2026-27 Old Dominion Research Professor, and previously directed the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities. She studies the turbulent histories of concepts related to nature, the physical body, affect, and life, especially in the ancient Greco-Roman world, from a co

Paul Pickering is the author of eight novels: Wild About Harry (Weidenfeld & Nicholson / Athenaeum 1985), Perfect English (Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1986), The Blue Gate of Babylon (Chatto and Windus / Random House US 1989), Charlie Peace (Random House 1991), The Leopard’s Wife (Simon & Schuster UK and US 2010), Over the Rainbow (Simon & Schuster 2014), Elephant (Salt 2021), and Lucy (Salt 2024). The Blue Gate of Babylon was a notable book of the year in the New York Times, who

Our imaginations are haunted by monoliths, haunted, so vividly that they shape even our thoughtful reflection. We not only have opinions, but ideological commitments. We not only have bad moods, but mood disorders. At work, we do not provide a simple service, but rather toil for an industry. It would be strange to say that I teach at a small college, that is, a plot of land the size of a city block with five hundred people, encountered one by one, classroom by classroom. Rath

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth. —Tim O’Brien[1] Given law’s position as a mechanism of social control and organisation, along with its inherently persuasive focus, it follows that studying effective storytelling can enhance law’s power.[2] However, a successful narrative is seldom strictly factual. In literature, this is where persuasive and rhetorical devices often enter: to convince a reader to beli

She envelops man in darkness, and urges him constantly to the light. She makes him dependent on the earth, heavy and sluggish, and always rouses him up afresh (Goethe, Nature Aphorisms ) Abstract [1] The extensive and in large parts forensic Newton-Goethe scholarship notwithstanding, one conjecture, teeming with possibilities, appears yet to have been sufficiently explored. It is that of a closer connection between Newton and Goethe, explored through the liminal figure of

Uncle Sam points an accusatory finger directly at the viewer, his expression stern and uncompromising. Behind him, the Statue of Liberty appears damaged, her torch dimmed, and surrounded by text reading ‘Protect Her’ and ‘Restore America’. Another post lists crimes attributed to undocumented migrants alongside the slogan ‘Report Foreign Invaders’.[1] Uncle Sam’s pointing finger does not invite. It demands. The damaged Liberty does not welcome but calls for protection. Nothing

In recent years, many Queer and / or Indigenous, Black, and other racialized artists, writers, and scholars have exposed the relationship between colonialism, climate change, and environmental issues around the world. These discourses point to the need for highlighting and resisting the colonial undertones and structures embedded in climate change policy or future environmental planning. Some artists have even stepped outside of conventional ways of thinking through climate c