Reading for Battle

Battle Readings is a regularly updated compilation of articles, essays, and opinion pieces relevant to the themes of the Battle of Ideas.

Choose a theme from the listing on the left to narrow your search, or view all readings.

Arts & Culture

This Is Modern Art
Modern art today is a cow cut in half with a chainsaw, floating in a glass tank... But what does it all mean? What is Modern Art? Why do we like/hate it? Can anybody do it? Is it always modern? Who started it?

Matthew Collings, Phoenix, 6 July 2000

Science fiction powers space research
The European Space Agency (Esa) is studying science fiction for ideas and technologies that could be used in future missions.
Mark Ward, BBC News, 11 May 2000

Conjectures on World Literature
What does it mean, studying world literature? How do we do it? I work on West European narrative between 1790 and 1930, and already feel like a charlatan outside of Britain or France. World literature?
Franco Morretti, New Left Review, January 2000

'Lefevre's Methode de Clarinette (1802): The Paris conservatoire at work' A study of how the Paris Conservatoire functioned to serve the propagandistic needs of the state

Colin Lawson, (eds) Maire F Cross and David Williams, Palgrave, 1999

"Magnum": Fifty Years at the Front Line of History - The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency
The story of how a small group of photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour - established and nurtured a co-operative photographic agency that has survived against all the odds to become the most famous in the world.

Russell Miller, Pimlico, 4 February 1999

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788, is the undisputed masterpiece of English historical writing which can only perish with the language itself.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Wordsworth, 19 September 1998

Balletophobia
'Ballet is often accused of offering a prettified version of life, an unreal picture of harsh reality, but that isn't quite so. Ballet presents life as it should be'
Alexandra Tomalonis, Ballet Alert! Onlibe, 1 February 1998

The Last Man and the New History
The narration [of history] inspired me with strange feelings. . . . -The Creature (Frankenstein)
Greg Kucich, Prometheus Unplugged, 13 September 1997

Use or ornament - the social impact of participation
'The real purpose of the arts', argues this influential 1997 publication, 'is not to create wealth but to contribute to a stable, confident and creative society'
Francois Matassaro, Comedia, 1996

Image Music Text
We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.

Roland Barthes, Fontana, 13 September 1993


Page 59 of 62 pages ‹ First  < 57 58 59 60 61 >  Last ›

Too much, too young: why is policy obsessed with teenage mums?

"If you'd rather not have your prejudices challenged, stay away from the Battle of Ideas."
Nigel Warburton, senior lecturer, philosophy, Open University; author, Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction

follow the Academy of Ideas