Journal of the History of Ideas

The new issue of the journal includes a cluster of articles, "The Brain Sciences and Intellectual History, 1945–75," organized by Danielle Carr and Andreas Killen. Read the introduction here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic... @daniellecarr.bsky.social

In the JHI Blog’s forum on the conceptual history of technology, Haris A. Durrani explains how the preference for "mentalist" definitions of invention established itself in US law, how it was temporarily defeated, and why it has come back so forcefully. @hdernity.bsky.social

JHI Blog is seeking additional Contributing Editors. Priority in this call will be given to specialists in ancient, medieval, Caribbean, and Ottoman intellectual history.

Congraulations to Luna Sabastian, winner of the JHI's Morris D. Forkosch Book Prize for "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva"!

For this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani talks with Derek Ide about his new book, "Ghosts of Bandung: Black Power and Palestine in the Global Cold War," and the intertwined histories of the Black Power and Palestinian liberation movements in the mid-twentieth century. @ucpress.bsky.social

The winner of the JHI’s inaugural Martin Jay Article Prize is Nayeli L. Riano for “The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings of Andrés Bello and Francisco Bilbao.”

New in the JHI Blog’s forum on technology: Karl Peeter Valk writes that in the late Middle Ages, the clock became a potent metaphor not because of its mechanical perfection, but because of its imperfection and imprecision. @karlvalk.bsky.social

Roslyn Dubler discusses her recent JHI journal article, “Juliet Mitchell, French Structuralistm, and the Subject of Feminism in 1970s Britian,” in a conversation with Carolina Iribarren.

Reminder: The JHI Blog's 2026 Graduate Student Symposium, “Prophecy, Prediction, and the Politics of Futurity” will be held this Saturday, October 17, from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm Eastern. For more information and to register for the Zoom event, visit the blog here: www.jhiblog.org/2026/08/24/r...

The new issue of the JHI includes articles by Timothy Stanton, Ian Stewart, and Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa, plus a cluster of essays by Yvan Prkachin, Danielle Carr, Jean-Gaël Barbara, Nadine Weidman, and Cornelius Borck on "The Brain Sciences and Intellectual History." www.jhiblog.org/2026/10/12/j...

The new issue of the JHI includes articles by Timothy Stanton, Ian Stewart, and Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa, plus a cluster of essays by Yvan Prkachin, Danielle Carr, Jean-Gaël Barbara, Nadine Weidman, and Cornelius Borck on "The Brain Sciences and Intellectual History, 1945–75."

Alec Israeli interviews John Samuel Harpham about his book, The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery (Harvard UP, 2025), which finds that English observers’ justifications of New World slavery only began to shift away from classical arguments in the late 17th century. @harvardpress.bsky.social

For the Blog’s forum on the conceptual history of technology, Tianyi Ding traces zero’s emergence through a series of material practices, from bookkeeping in Renaissance Italy and weaving in eighteenth-century France to the 1890 US census and birth of IBM.

For the Blog, Alexander Aerts interviews Isabel Jacobs and Jacob Saliba about their edited volume, "Authority, History, and Political Theology" (Bloomsbury, 2026), which documents the relationship between philosopher Alexandre Kojève and theologian Gaston Fessard. @jacobsaliba.bsky.social

Beneath every historical concept of technology lies a different concept of the hand, writes Rae Bruml Norton in the JHI Blog’s technology forum. When we hear claims that technology has become separate from the craft of the hand, we must ask just which "hand" is being discussed.

For the In Theory podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Benoît Loiseau about his new work, "The Death of the Clinic: Radical Experiments in the Art of Medicine," which offers a formally inventive history of five radical attempts to reimagine the institution of the clinic in the 20th century.

In the JHI Blog's ongoing forum, D. W. Kamish explores the origins of the "taboo" on technological determinism, namely in reductive attacks on Soviet Marxists, and calls for its end.

Opening the JHI Blog’s technology forum, Kapp Singer critiques the history of science’s late-twentieth-century fixation on “living technologies.” Instead of historicizing the standpoint of the ascendant biotech industry, Singer argues, many historians inadvertently reproduced it.

In an interview for the JHI Blog, Nathan Schlanger discusses his book, "The Invention of Technology: An Intellectual History with André Leroi-Gourhan," which charts how Leroi-Gourhan helped make the study of techniques central to the many fields with which he engaged. @universitypress.cambridge.org

The JHI Blog's newsletter is a great way to stay in the loop about updates and new scholarship from the blog and journal. Here's the latest installment, with information about the upcoming symposium, links to many un-paywalled journal articles, and so much more.

JHI Blog editors Zac Endter and Jonas Knatz introduce their forum on "The Conceptual History of Technology." Contributions will be published weekly through December. @zacendter.bsky.social @jonasknatz.bsky.social

The latest issue of the journal includes an article by İlker Aytürk and Anıl Kahvecioğlu: "The Second Life of the Constitution of Medina: On the Possibility of a Liberal Islam in Turkey in the 1990s." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/article/997085 @ilkerayturk.bsky.social

For the In Theory podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Mélanie Lamotte about her book, "By Flesh and Toil," which unveils how a shared set of racial laws wedded sites across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the early French Empire. @harvardpress.bsky.social

The latest issue of the journal includes an article by Piotr Kuligowski and Bartłomiej Błesznowski: "Beyond the Revolutionary Motto? Three Polish Accounts of Fraternity in the Long Nineteenth Century." Read it here on Project MUSE: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic... @pkuligowski.bsky.social

The new issue of the journal includes an article by Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, "'Natural Wonders Are Greater than Miracles': Christian Wolff on Supernatural Events." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Unglid Paul interviews Doyle D. Calhoun, Alioune B. Fall, and Cheikh Thiam about Léopold Sédar Senghor, Négritude, and the respective challenges of translating the man and the idea in their recent work, “The Essential Senghor: African Philosophy and Black Aesthetics.” @dukepress.bsky.social

The new issue of the journal includes an article by Joshua Freed: "Mixing Labour and Mixed Property: The Law of Locke's Original Appropriation." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Registration is now open for the 2026 Graduate Student Symposium, “Prophecy, Prediction, and the Politics of Futurity” to be held on Saturday, October 17, 2026, from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm Eastern on Zoom.

The new issue of the journal includes an article by Markku Peltonen: "'Free Democracy' and 'Restricted Democracy' in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

For the Blog, Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa interviews Joanna Stalnaker about her newest book, "The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death" (2025). @yalepress.bsky.social

The new issue of the journal includes an article by Iain McDaniel, "Democracy, Caesarism, and Kulturgeschichte: Georg Friedrich Kolb Contra Mommsen and Hellwald." Read it here on Project MUSE, with no paywall for the next few weeks: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic... @iainmcdaniel.bsky.social

In an interview with Rex Butler on the Blog, Ian Hunter discusses his new book, The Kantian Religion (2026). Hunter understands Kantian philosophy as an ascetic practice of self-transformation, and he explores its ongoing rivalry with humanist historiography. @princetonupress.bsky.social

The new issue of the journal includes an article by Roslyn Dubler: "Juliet Mitchell, French Structuralism, and the Subject of Feminism in 1970s Britain." Read it here on Project MUSE, with no paywall for the next few weeks: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In this essay for the JHI Blog, Soumyadeep Guha traces the history of the cooperative in India during the formation of the “global countryside” and how the cooperative offered a compelling reconciliation of the tenets of a market-based society with the moral-based ideas of community.

A new issue of the journal is now available, with articles by Markku Peltonen, Joshua Freed, Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero, Iain McDaniel, Piotr Kuligowski and Bartłomiej Błesznowski, Roslyn Dubler, and İlker Aytürk and Anıl Kahvecioğlu.

What might it mean to defamiliarize the concept of "the peasant"? On this episode of In Theory, Navyug Gill addresses this question, among others, while speaking with Disha Karnad Jani about his book "Labors of Division: Global Capitalism and the Emergence of the Peasant in Colonial Panjab."

As Alexander Aerts writes for the blog, it was Russo-French philosopher Koyré who first conceptualized the end of history, using it to ask questions about what imparts meaning to human time. His student and friend, Kojève, went on to equate the end of history with the end of politics.

For Summer 2026 Reading Recommendations, we asked members of the JHI community to suggest texts related to intellectual history, broadly conceived. Responses spanned ecology and animality, the material life of texts, Asian feminisms, and the concepts of work, excess, and accountability.

On the Blog, Christian Jacobs recovers a forgotten type of “Europeanization” in the early 1980s that expanded rather than stabilized European identities: the intercultural Moussem festivals organized by Moroccan workers’ organizations. @christianjacobs.bsky.social

For the blog, Anin Luo interviews Felix A. Jiménez Botta about his book, Latin America and Human Rights Politics in West Germany, 1973–1990. @felixjimenezbotta.bsky.social @universitypress.cambridge.org

In this essay for the JHI Blog, Mayaki Kimba uses his experience conducting research on Réunionnais and French Antillean activists in the early 1970s as an opportunity to reflect on how one might write a history of political thought based on the adversarial archives of the security state.

Jochen Schmon interviewed Jensen Suther about his book, True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom and ongoing research. @jochenschmon.bsky.social @jensensuther.bsky.social @stanfordpress.bsky.social