Category Archives: Roman Jakobson

Roman Jakobson’s two series of 1972 lectures at the Collège de France – dating, topics and archival traces, and his friendships with Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan

In Stephen Rudy’s chronology of Roman Jakobson’s career, the entry for 1972 reads, in part:  Visiting Professor, Collège de France, Dec. […] Professeur d’état, Collège de France. Four lectures, Feb. 3-8. How many lectures did he give across the visits, and … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Antoine Meillet, Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 29: working on Benveniste’s Vocabulaire, Dumézil’s Bilan and other work

I’ve been back in the UK for a few months, though I continue to work through the archival material I saw in the United States, some of which is in the form of notes, some photos of things, and a … Continue reading

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment

Émile Benveniste on auxiliarity – an Acta Linguistica Hafniensia article, Eli Fischer-Jørgensen, a misplaced abstract and a 1965-66 Collège de France course

In 1965, Émile Benveniste published “Structure des relations d’auxiliarité” in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia – a journal founded by the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen. Its initial editors were Viggo Brøndal and Louis Hjelmslev. Although the journal had been founded in 1939, and published five … Continue reading

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Books received – Denman, Jakobson, Harari, Derrida, Foucault, Fischer-Jørgensen

Derek S. Denman, Fortress Power: Hostile Designs and the Politics of Spatial Control, second-hand copies of Roman Jakobson, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, Josué V. Harari, Scenarios of the Imaginary, Eli Fischer-Jørgensen, Trends in Phonological Theory: A Historical Introduction, and … Continue reading

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 3 Comments

Books received – Garber, Serres, Spanos, Bové & O’Hara, Trubetzkoy & Jakobson, Boulez

Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare in Bloomsbury, now in paperback; Michel Serres, Hermes II: Interference; the older collection The Question of Textuality: Strategies of Reading in Contemporary American Criticism; Nikolai Trubetzkoy’s correspondence with Roman Jakobson in French translation; and Pierre Boulez’s lectures … Continue reading

Posted in Michel Serres, Roman Jakobson, William Shakespeare | 1 Comment

Six Months of ‘Sunday Histories’ – weekly short essays on Progressive Geographies

At the beginning of 2025 I decided to try to post a short essay each week on Progressive Geographies. I felt the blog had become too much of a noticeboard, sharing information about interesting books, talks or shorter pieces by … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Alexandre Koyré, Edward Said, Emile Benveniste, Erwin Panofsky, Henri Lefebvre, Jean Hyppolite, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Pierre Yves-Testenoire, Les cours de Roman Jakobson à l’École Libre des Hautes Études: New York, 1942–1946 – De Gruyter, August 2025

Pierre Yves-Testenoire, Les cours de Roman Jakobson à l’École Libre des Hautes Études: New York, 1942–1946 – De Gruyter, August 2025 Exiled in the United States during the Second World War, linguist Roman Jakobson gave a series of lectures at the … Continue reading

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Books received – Quinn, Stonebridge, Harari, Donato, Anheim & Pasquali, Kojève, Jakobson, Wilson, Fall

A pile of mostly recently bought books, including Josephine Quinn, How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History; Lyndsey Stonebridge, We are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience; Etienne Anheim and Paul Pasquali, Bourdieu et Panofsky: … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Kojève, Boundaries, Erwin Panofsky, Hannah Arendt, Juliet Fall, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Territory | 1 Comment

Roman Jakobson, Franz Boas, and the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library

The support for refugee scholars to come to the United States of America in the 1930s and 1940s is well known. Varian Fry famously helped several hundred European artists and intellectuals to flee Vichy France between 1940 and 1941. The … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ernst Cassirer, Ernst Kantorowicz, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 28: archives in Princeton, Chicago and final work in New York

I’ve continued my work with archives in the USA over the past several weeks. Some of this has been in relation to the Indo-European Thought project, but I’ve managed to work on some peripheral things too.I had two days in Princeton, … Continue reading

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Edward Said, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Vladimir Nabokov | 1 Comment