Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Pierre Bourdieu and Erwin Panofsky: Architecture, Scholasticism and the Concept of Habitus

Posted on September 14, 2025 by stuartelden

In 1967, Pierre Bourdieu translated Erwin Panofsky’s 1951 book Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism into French. The German-born Panofsky is best known for his work in art history, and for developing Aby Warburg’s distinction between iconography and iconology. He was teaching alternate semesters … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Erwin Panofsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Sunday Histories | 5 Comments

Glyph: Johns Hopkins Textual Studies – Samuel Weber, Deconstruction and the American Reception of French Theory

Posted on September 7, 2025 by stuartelden

Several journals played a significant role in introducing so-called ‘French Theory’ to the United States. They would include Yale French Studies, Diacritics, boundary 2 and Semiotext(e). Yale French Studies claims to be “the oldest English-language journal in the United States devoted to French and Francophone literature and … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Derrida, Sunday Histories | 1 Comment

Books received – Febvre, Hiltebeitel, Comaroff, Kantorowicz, Glyph 7, Gadoffre, Eliade & Couliano, Harvey

Posted on September 5, 2025 by stuartelden

Books received – mostly bought second-hand, but also Joshua Comaroff, Spectropolis: The Enchantment of Capital in Singapore, sent by University of Minnesota Press, and Ernst Kantorowicz, Radiances: Unpublished Essays on Gods, Kingship, and Images of the State, edited by Robert E. Lerner, … Continue reading →

Posted in David Harvey, Ernst Kantorowicz, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

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

Posted on August 31, 2025 by stuartelden

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 | 2 Comments

Michel Foucault’s early English translations – indications from the archives of the Georges Borchardt literary agency, the memoirs of André Schiffrin and the Susan Sontag connection

Posted on August 24, 2025 by stuartelden

Now it is almost automatic: a new book by Foucault in French is translated within a couple of years. The Collège de France courses, the Vrin series of critical editions of lecture courses and now other material, the fourth volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Lucien Gerschel, Georges Dumézil, William Shakespeare and the history of Coriolanus 

Posted on August 17, 2025 by stuartelden

One of Georges Dumézil’s most loyal students was Lucien Gerschel. He seems to have begun attending his classes at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1937-38, but certainly was there for the 1938-39 course which became Dumézil’s 1940 book Mitra-Varuna. … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Shakespearean Territories, Sunday Histories, William Shakespeare | 1 Comment

How Literary Agents Made Italian Publishing Transnational: An Interview with Anna Ferrando

Posted on August 15, 2025 by stuartelden

How Literary Agents Made Italian Publishing Transnational: An Interview with Anna Ferrando – Journal of the History of Ideas blog with Rose Facchini Anna Ferrando is a researcher in Contemporary History at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Publishing, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France: A Structural Analysis of the Wolverine in North American Mythology

Posted on August 10, 2025 by stuartelden

In the 1949-50 academic year, Claude Lévi-Strauss gave the Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France. He was hoping to get elected to a chair there at this time, and behind the scenes various people were lobbying for this to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments

A postcard to Arne Furumark from the 1956 Mycenaean Studies conference

Posted on August 8, 2025 by stuartelden

Looking for something else, I chanced upon a postcard to Arne Furumark, available online, signed by the participants at the 1956 Mycenaean Studies conference outside of Paris, which I talk about here. Among the names are the decipherers of Linear B, … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Herman Lommel and the ancient Aryans – Hegel’s great-grandson, Saussure translator and his links to Benveniste, Dumézil and Wikander

Posted on August 3, 2025 by stuartelden

In Mitra-Varuna in 1940, Georges Dumézil mentions the equation of Ahura-Mazdāh and Varuna, which he says was a “hypothesis, long accepted without argument”, but which “has subsequently been hotly disputed – wrongly, in my belief”, and that “on this point I regret … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment