#StepUP – Uni Press Week 2024
This year’s theme—#StepUP—is a chance to discover the ways university presses step up to educate, enlighten, and take action and to explore how their publications and platforms help to contextualize current issues and events, offer solutions to global challenges, and amplify diverse voices across an array of disciplines. Inaugurated by Jimmy Carter in 1978, University […]
Thunderstorms in Art and Literature
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. Benjamin Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod had far-reaching consequences, not only in religious but also in aesthetic terms. Men’s newly gained mastery of celestial fire made it […]
Demons and Thunder
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. Enlightened Protestants and Catholics both wanted to liberate simple folk from ignorance, fear, and superstition by good instruction. In enlightened eyes, fear of thunderstorms was not only evidence […]
Feature on Turkey Book Talk
Take a listen to Alp Yenen on weighing up the Republic of Turkey’s legacy at 100 years. Along with Erik-Jan Zürcher, Alp co-edited the volume, published to mark the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey. It is a rich potpourri of 100 short chapters, written by over 70 scholars, examining different aspects […]
Religious Reactions to Thunderstorms
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. That God addresses people directly in thunder and lightning was a generally accepted idea in the religious mentality of the sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century West. That notion of […]
A New Invention: Franklin and the Netherlands
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. Benjamin Franklin visited the Dutch Republic on two occasions. When he and his son William travelled in the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic in August and September […]
Lightning, Volcanism and Earthquakes!
By writer Jan Wim Buisman in a featured series about his book Lightning in the Age of Benjamin Franklin. This blog was originally published by the John Adams Institute. This year, Iceland once again proved itself to be a volcanic island. You will remember that as of February 8, 2024 a couple of volcanoes produced […]
Middle Eastern Library Launch
An extraordinary launch for an extraordinary publication! At the opening of the Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University on 25 September 2024, we were delighted to launch our latest publication Prophets, Poets and Scholars. With the richly varied opening program that included speed lectures by authors, the evening allowed visitors to truly delve into the […]
