Journal of the History of Ideas

A quote from the article: "This is a story about how easily erudition could upset the more fragile areas of the post- Reformation theological consensus, and yet it is also a story about how rapidly erudition could become as inflated and speculative as the most cynical early modern caricature of medieval scholasticism."

Kirsten Macfarlane's article in the summer issue of the JHI, "Written in the Stars? Alphabets and Angels in Early Modern Europe," is free to read and download for the next few weeks: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

JHI 86.3 Now Available Online! The July 2025 issue is now available!

The latest issue of the journal is now available online, including articles by Luuk de Boer, Kaarlo Havu, Kirsten Macfarlane, Ingrid Schreiber, Rolf Strøm-Olsen, Victoria Smolkin and Daniel Peris, and Sophie Scott-Brown. Happy reading!

Neoconservatism: A Roundtable Graham Ashurst, Emily Hull, and Sophie Joscelyne

Today on the blog, scholars Graham Ashurst, Emily Hull, and Sophie Joscelyne discuss the theoretical intricacies and historical perplexities behind neoconservatism.

The Internal Colony: Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sam Klug by Disha Karnad Jani

In today’s podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sam Klug (@samklug.bsky.social) about his recent book, The Internal Colony (@uchicagopress.bsky.social), which explores how the process of decolonization in the 1940s-70s transformed US debates about the role of race in American life.

Fazıl Ahmed Pasha and the Politics of Knowledge: In Conversation with M. Fatih Çalışır by Nilab Saeedi In this interview, Nilab Saeedi speaks with M. Fatih Çalışır about the intellectual life of the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire, where knowledge was not only preserved or encouraged...

Today on the blog, M. Fatih Çalışır discusses the mutual reinforcement of statesmanship and intellectual life in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire, which broadened and internationalized its epistemologies under the rule of Fazıl Ahmed Pasha.

Everything Has a Price: The Commercial Gaze and the Origins of Corporate Empire by Brandon Taylor

In today's think piece on the JHI Blog, Brandon Taylor tracks the emergence of the flattening "commercial gaze" in the earliest British East India Company travelogues.

Marx’s Reception in the United States: An Interview with Andrew Hartman by Alec Israeli In Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Andrew Hartman offers a history of Karl Marx’s role as “ghost in the machine” of American life and thought. Beginning with ...

In this interview, Andrew Hartman (@andrewhartman.bsky.social) discusses how the US was a structuring example in Marx's thought and how conditions in the US shaped the reception of Marx's work from the 19th century to the present. His new book is "Karl Marx in America" (@uchicagopress.bsky.social).

Spaces of Anticolonialism: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Stephen Legg by Disha Karnad Jani

In todays episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Stephen Legg (@stephenlegg11.bsky.social) about his recent @ugapress.bsky.social book, Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities.

Announcing the Martin Jay Article Prize for Graduate Students Celebrating the profoundly influential historian Martin Jay and his contribution to graduate education, this new award recognizes the best graduate student-authored article accepted for publication in...

The JHI’s Board of Editors is delighted to announce a new award for graduate students.

The Martin Jay Prize recognizes the best article by a graduate student-author accepted for publication in the journal each year. The editors welcome your submissions!

The Architects of Dignity: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Kevin Pham by Disha Karnad Jani

In today's podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Kevin Pham (@kdpham.bsky.social‬) about his recent book, The Architects of Dignity (Oxford University Press, 2024).

JHI Graduate Student Symposium, 2025: “Between the Text and Material History,” Call for Proposals Now accepting proposals for the JHI Graduate Student Symposium.

Attention grad students: The deadline for proposals for the JHI's 2025 Graduate Student Symposium has been extended to June 16. There's still time! See here for more information:

“Language and Image Minus Cognition”: An Interview with Leif Weatherby by Robin Manley

Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social‬) discusses his new book, Language Machines, with Robin Manley (@robinmanley.bsky.social‬). The interview covers similarities between structuralism and Large Language Models, Saussure's relationship to Marxism, and theories versus histories of the present.

Knowledge and Colonialism in the Atlantic Republic of Letters: An Interview with Diego Pirillo by Matias X. Gonzalez

Today on the blog, Matias X. Gonzalez chats with Diego Pirillo about his JHI article "How Knowledge Travels: Learned Periodicals and the Atlantic Republic of Letters."

Here's the article: "Academic Freedom in the English Revolution: Libertas Scholastica, Libertas Philosophandi, and the Reformation of the Universities" by Thomas Matthew Vozar

Academic Freedom in Early Modern England Plus: Our 10 most-read stories this year so far.

We're delighted to encounter a discussion of Thomas Vozar's recent JHI article in this Chronicle of Higher Education newsletter.

JHI Graduate Student Symposium, 2025: “Between the Text and Material History,” Call for Proposals Now accepting proposals for the JHI Graduate Student Symposium.

We're still accepting proposals for “Between the Text and Material History,” the 2025 JHI Grad Student Symposium.

Submit your proposal by next Friday, June 13.

The symposium will explore how historians' engagement with visual and material sources extends the discipline’s intellectual realms.

A quote from the article: "The biology of the state might be the most radical theoretical example of what we would like to call here a 'biopolitical tendency to naturalize the social.'"

In the latest issue of the JHI, Mikołaj Ratajczak delineates the genealogy of “biopolitics” in the discourse on the “biology of the state": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

What Is Post-Fascism? by Sven Reichardt

Sven Reichardt analyzes the historical and comparative literature on fascism alongside recent research in the social sciences, arguing that we should wield the concept of fascism with far greater sophistication than is often practiced.

A quote from the article: "Felix Adler had defined the program of his New York Society for Ethical Culture as that of a 'practical religion,' and even if [Hermann] Cohen did agree with Adler’s fight against particularism, a fight he himself defined as a fight for 'all' human beings, he believed that such a fight cannot be led by means of a religion, whichever it is. It should be furthered politically."

The latest JHI includes an article by Myriam Bienenstock, "Assessing Ethical Culture in Germany: Friedrich Albert Lange, Felix Adler—and Hermann Cohen": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Olga Lenczewska: "Kant on Moral Education and the Origins of Humanity"

muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Translation in Different Keys: An Interview with Kasia Szymanska by Rose Facchini

What's the problem with declarations of a new translation's "authoritative" status? In an interview on her new book, Translation Multiples, Kasia Szymanska (@kaszyma.bsky.social) discusses the idiosyncrasies and possibilities of the practice of translation. @princetonupress.bsky.social

A quote from the article: "The loss of these translations paints another picture of censorship in early modern Italy to be hung beside those of earlier studies. Here we find not eagle-eyed censors imperiously rooting out any trace of heresy, nor men of letters happily collaborating on the dismemberment and reassembly of their works. We instead find overworked scholars leaving their manuscripts on the desks of equally overworked censors, until these manuscripts were forgotten or rendered obsolete by rival publications."

Sam Kennerley contributes the final article on the Greek Fathers in the latest JHI: "A 'Lost Renaissance' of Patristic Scholarship? Unpublished Latin Translations of John Chrysostom Created in Italy Between 1575 and 1585": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

A quote from the article: "Obscure and challenging authors, such as Clement of Alexandria, were rescued from library shelves and thrust into the intellectual fray, gaining newfound but ambiguous fame."

In the latest issue of the journal, Maria Fallica considers the patristic anthologies curated by Herman Hamelmann to understand the early modern reception of the Greek Fathers during the inception of Lutheran confessionalization: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Consider subscribing to the newsletter—just four emails a year, coinciding with the release of new issues of the journal. It's an easy way to stay in the loop: jhiblog.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=...

JHI Blog Newsletter: Spring 2025 Catch up on new scholarship from the Blog & the Journal

Check out the newsletter to catch up on new scholarship and announcements from the blog and journal—including a round-up of recent posts and a CFP for the upcoming, seventh annual Grad Student Symposium.

mailchi.mp/178e0d922e4a...

From Anticolonialism to Constitutional Capture: An Interview with Sandipto Dasgupta by Zainab Firdausi

Today on the blog, Sandipto Dasgupta discusses his new book on the transition from anticolonialism to postcolonialism in the writing of the Indian constitution. He questions narratives of a conflict between singular "indigenous" vs. "Western" political traditions.

A quote from the article: "In Melanchthon’s view, the study of Nazianzus and the other eloquent Greek Fathers he had been promoting in Wittenberg through his courses and editions was instrumental for forming the future generation of Reformed leaders and scholars and ensuring they would not suffer defeats such as the one experienced in Leipzig by Karlsdatdt and, less manifestly, by Luther."

In the latest issue of the JHI, Marta Quatrale explores Melanchthon's editions of the Greek Fathers.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

JHI Graduate Student Symposium, 2025: “Between the Text and Material History,” Call for Proposals Now accepting proposals for the JHI Graduate Student Symposium.

We're now accepting proposals for the JHI Graduate Student Symposium, to be held via Zoom on October 4.

This year's symposium, “Between the Text and Material History," will explore how historians’ engagement with visual and material sources extends the discipline’s intellectual realms.

A quote from the article: "Against the recent Platonizing interpretations of ps.-Dionysius, Lefèvre introduced his edition as an antidote brewed from the scholarly and religious resources of Paris."

The cluster on the Greek Fathers in the new JHI includes an article by Christa Lundberg: "Humanist Translation and the Parisian Tradition: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’s ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite"

muse.jhu.edu/article/959039

A quote from the article: "While Ficino primarily viewed the Fathers through the lens of their alignment with the Platonic tradition and Poliziano approached their works as a repository of classical references and eloquence, Pico pursued a more comprehensive engagement with the Greek Fathers, valuing their philosophical insights beyond the confines of Platonism and integrating their perspectives into his broader intellectual endeavors."

The cluster on Greek patristics in the new JHI includes an article by Francisco Bastitta Harriet: "Studying, Translating, and Editing the Greek Fathers in Lorenzo’s Florence: Pico, Poliziano, and Ficino" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...