Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome, by Guy de la Bédoyère Barbara Graziosi finds flaws in a claim that Roman wives and mothers held true power By Barbara Graziosi 20 December
Literary Studies Deconstructed: A Polemic, by Catherine Butler Richard Bradford shares an author’s infuriation that the ‘mongrel subject’ of literary studies fails to reflect real-life talk about literature By Richard Bradford 18 October
The criminal neglect of detective fiction Why does the academy treat the genre so disrespectfully? Richard Bradford investigates By Richard Bradford 4 June
‘Everything in the world is about sex’ Twenty-five years after its publication, Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae is still an energising ‘cultural bible’ 21 May
Etty Hillesum: an intellectual woman ahead of her time Mary Evans on the insights into persecution, knowledge and sexuality of a Dutch Jewish writer killed in Auschwitz 27 February
Just William deserves critical recognition Richmal Crompton’s stories have thrilled generations of children but critics have kept their distance. It is time the establishment embraced them 19 September