Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Leonard Robert Palmer, Elisabeth/Elizabeth Palmer and the “Studies in General Linguistics” series – a note on the English editors and translators of André Martinet and Émile Benveniste

Posted on June 29, 2025 by stuartelden

Leonard Robert Palmer (1906-1984) was a British linguist, important both for his own work and as an editor. Early in his career he taught Classics at the Victoria University of Manchester, became Chair of Greek at King’s College London, and from … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Henri Lefebvre and the “Liste Otto” of Prohibited Books in Occupied France

Posted on June 22, 2025 by stuartelden

The “Liste Otto” was named after Otto Abetz, German ambassador to France under the Occupation, from August 1940 until the Liberation. The list indicated which books had to be removed from sale, with existing copies destroyed, after the German invasion … Continue reading →

Posted in Adam David Morton, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Understanding Henri Lefebvre | 6 Comments

Josué V. Harari, the Marquis de Sade, and Michel Foucault’s 1970 lectures in Buffalo

Posted on June 15, 2025 by stuartelden

Josué V. Harari plays a small but important role in the story of Foucault in the United States. A PhD researcher at the University at Buffalo when Foucault visited in the early 1970s, he went on to edit a 1979 volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edward Said, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, Pierre Klossowski, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories | 6 Comments

Gillian Rose and the Indo-Europeanists

Posted on June 8, 2025 by stuartelden

While I’ve been working on my Indo-European thought project, I’ve looked at a few books from the University of Warwick’s library which came from the Gillian Rose collection. Some of the books from that collection could not be borrowed – ones … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Gillian Rose, Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Louis Althusser’s 1967-68 course on ‘philosophy for scientists’ – the resulting publications and the archive of its lectures

Posted on June 4, 2025 by stuartelden

Louis Althusser’s seminars at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) are of course best known for the famous Reading Capital volume, which developed from his 1964-65 seminar. He ran seminars on the young Marx in 1961-62 and Lacan and psychoanalysis in 1963-64. I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Georges Canguilhem, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Pierre Macherey, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

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

Posted on June 1, 2025 by stuartelden

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

The Early Edward Said, Michel Foucault and Jonathan Swift

Posted on May 25, 2025 by stuartelden

Given all his other achievements, Edward Said’s role in bringing Foucault’s work to an anglophone audience is perhaps understated today. His 1971 essay “Abecedarium culturae”, in Northwestern’s literary journal TriQuarterly was a significant piece on so-called “structuralism”, and the following year’s “Michel … Continue reading →

Posted in Edward Said, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

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

Posted on May 20, 2025 by stuartelden

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

Alexandre Koyré in Cairo

Posted on May 18, 2025 by stuartelden

This is a revised and expanded version of a post from September 2024 Alexandre Koyré’s teaching career was predominantly in Paris and the United States. Born in Russia, he studied in Paris and Germany, before beginning teaching at the École Pratique des Hautes … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Murder of Ioan Culianu – Eliade, Anton, Eco, Lincoln and the University of Chicago

Posted on May 11, 2025 by stuartelden

The story sounds like a detective novel or a spy thriller. A professor of the history of religion at the University of Chicago is shot at close range in the third-floor bathroom of Swift Hall in 1991. The killing is … Continue reading →

Posted in Mircea Eliade, Sunday Histories, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 6 Comments