In the past year, while worldwide lockdowns have been instituted for the preservation of life, many people have been forced to ponder anew what the value of it is: what, if anything, makes life ‘beautiful’? In the silence of our isolated homes, the call to find meaning—a call which has always been sounding in Read more…
Having recently joined the FiSch Blog team, I thought I should introduce myself properly. I am currently a doctoral student working on British popular song during the Napoleonic Wars. The story of how I ended up working on this project is involved: its chief protagonists include my mother, who pushed Read more…
Georgina Prineppi considers how God may value our research in the arts and social sciences. As a music historian, I cringe whenever a new acquaintance asks me what I ‘do’: my answer is invariably greeted with a somewhat quizzical expression, and often a barrage of follow-up questions about why studying the history of music would Read more…
Today I want to talk about a poem. Archaic Torso of Apollo We cannot know his legendary headwith eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torsois still suffused with brilliance from inside,like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwisethe curved breast Read more…
A guest post from David Parry. A report from the Christian Literary Studies Group Annual Conference The Christian Literary Studies Group gathered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on Saturday 5th November for our annual day conference, which this year had the theme “Shaping Ends: Aspects of Apocalypse”. Current world events were Read more…
I’ve just come to the end of the second official week of my DPhil. In between all the library inductions, research workshops, and meeting new people, I’ve been doing some thinking about where I want my research to go: the kind of questions I want to ask, and work towards Read more…
A guest post from Richard Vytniorgu. ‘Culture’ is a notoriously difficult word. For some it refers to art galleries and piano concerts; for others it refers to something faintly bacterial; while for others still it refers to the entire realm of human activity and life. Broadly speaking, in the arts and Read more…
This post is the second of a short series summarising the three main talks given by Jonathan Chaplin and Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin at the Faith-in-Scholarship conference in February. (Summary of Jonathan’s first talk.) Adrienne’s talk, on ‘Faith, Truth and Experience’, drew in particular on her own expertise in the field Read more…