Joanna Bourke has spent three decades at Birkbeck in London as an academic and professor of history. Yet in her intensely detailed history of the college, published on its 200th birthday, she doesn’t leave out the blemishes. Birkbeck started life as the London Mechanics’ Institute (LMI) in 1823, just four years after the Peterloo massacre. […]
Unlike our colleagues in most other academic disciplines, those of us who study and teach English literature have never quite managed to agree on a single term that aligns what we do – our professional identity as teachers and researchers – with the materials we study. People who study the stars are astronomers. Economists investigate […]
What could possibly go wrong? More than three hundred overprivileged American students travelling the world on a hastily converted troopship, led by a recently sacked university professor determined to prove that travel could be as educational as any university course and keen to make money in the process. Underfunded, under-recruited and poorly run, the ‘Floating University’ circumnavigated the world over a seven-month
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm