Category Archives: People

Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jakobson, Marc Szeftel and The Song of Igor

Posted on February 9, 2025 by stuartelden

Superficially at least, the stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) would seem to connect. Both were born in Russia – Nabokov in Saint Petersburg; Jakobson in Moscow; both went into exile after the Revolution – Nabokov in … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Jean Gottmann, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 17 Comments

Special issue: Alexandre Kojève and Russian Philosophy – Studies in East European Thought, eds. Isabel Jacobs and Trevor Wilson, March 2024

Posted on February 5, 2025 by stuartelden

Special issue: Alexandre Kojève and Russian Philosophy – Studies in East European Thought, eds. Isabel Jacobs and Trevor Wilson, March 2024 Alexandre Kojève and Russian philosophy, Isabel Jacobs & Trevor Wilson The paradoxical anchoring of Kojève’s philosophizing in the tradition … Continue reading →

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Gillian Rose articles in Thesis Eleven

Posted on February 3, 2025 by stuartelden

Some new articles about Gillian Rose in Thesis Eleven Michael Lazarus, Economy and state: The politics of citizenship and universality in Gillian Rose, Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxemburg – open access J.M. Bernstein, Reification in the age of climate catastrophe: … Continue reading →

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Sunday histories – short essays on Progressive Geographies

Posted on February 2, 2025 by stuartelden

Updated June 2025: The full list of essays in this series is here. Over the past several years, my Progressive Geographies blog has become too much of a noticeboard, sharing information about books, talks or shorter pieces by other people … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

Thomas Sebeok, Umberto Eco and the Semiotics of Nuclear Waste

Posted on February 2, 2025 by stuartelden

The oldest texts preserved are inscriptions which date back about 5,000 years, though the dating is disputed, and how they should be read presents its own controversies. Most of the earliest texts are on tablets or in stone; with surviving … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Julia Kristeva, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Umberto Eco | 13 Comments

Alexander Aerts, “Alexandre Kojève: Bildung in a Revolutionary Cell” – Journal of the History of Ideas blog

Posted on January 31, 2025 by stuartelden

Alexander Aerts, “Alexandre Kojève: Bildung in a Revolutionary Cell” – Journal of the History of Ideas blog In 1918 the Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968) was caught selling soap on the black-market in Moscow by the Tchèka, the political police … Continue reading →

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Mathelinda Nabugodi, Shelley with Benjamin: A Critical Mosaic – UCL Press, January 2023 (open access)

Posted on January 30, 2025 by stuartelden

Mathelinda Nabugodi, Shelley with Benjamin: A Critical Mosaic – UCL Press, January 2023 (open access) *Yet what surprises me most of all at this time is that what I have written consists, as it were, almost entirely of quotations. – … Continue reading →

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Kevin B. Anderson, The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism – Verso, March 2025

Posted on January 29, 2025 by stuartelden

Kevin B. Anderson, The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism – Verso, March 2025 The author of the acclaimed Marx at the Margins analyses the late Marx on Indigenous communism, gender, and anti-colonialism. In his late writings, Marx went beyond the … Continue reading →

Posted in Karl Marx | 1 Comment

Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss and Thomas Gregory (eds.), Global Politics: A New Introduction 4th Edition – Routledge, 2025

Posted on January 28, 2025 by stuartelden

Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss and Thomas Gregory (eds.), Global Politics: A New Introduction 4th Edition – Routledge, 2025 Global Politics: A New Introduction engages directly with questions that those coming to the study of world politics bring with them. From that … Continue reading →

Posted in Jenny Edkins, Maja Zehfuss, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Marie-Louise Sjoestedt (1900-1940): an important scholar of Celtic languages and mythology

Posted on January 26, 2025 by stuartelden

One of the challenges with my current project on Indo-European thought in France is how male-dominated it is. If you look at a photograph of the professors of the Collège de France in 1967, you can perhaps see why. It wasn’t much better at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Sunday Histories | 15 Comments