Category Archives: Sunday Histories

Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jakobson, and The Song of Igor – other sources for the story of a failed collaboration

Posted on May 4, 2025 by stuartelden

In a previous piece on Vladimir Nabokov, Roman Jakobson, Marc Szeftel and The Song of Igor, I outlined the story of a planned collaborative edition and English translation of the Slavic epic The Song of Igor. This is a text of disputed … Continue reading →

Posted in Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 8 Comments

Émile Benveniste and the Sogdian Word for ‘Knee’

Posted on April 27, 2025 by stuartelden

This was written for an event on ‘Troubling Classical Bodies‘ at the Remarque Institute at New York University on 11 April 2025. My thanks to Stefanos Geroulanos and Brooke Holmes for the invitation to give this short talk, and to … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Richard III or Edward III? A small historical error in Foucault’s History of Madness – and his attempt to correct it

Posted on April 24, 2025 by stuartelden

There is a small historical error in Foucault’s History of Madness, which endures through the different French versions with the exception of Oeuvres, but which is corrected in one of the English versions. Yes, there are other errors, but I’m focused on … Continue reading →

Posted in Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | 4 Comments

Foucault at Buffalo in 1970 and 1972: The Desire for Knowledge; The Criminal in Literature; and The History of Truth

Posted on April 20, 2025 by stuartelden

I have discussed Foucault’s two visits to Buffalo before. First, most briefly, in Foucault: The Birth of Power (2017). In that book, which is on the first half of the 1970s, I simply indicated that Foucault gave some lectures in Buffalo (pp. … Continue reading →

Posted in Foucault: The Birth of Power, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Fifteen ‘Sunday Histories’ on Progressive Geographies

Posted on April 17, 2025 by stuartelden

There are now fifteen ‘Sunday Histories‘ posted on Progressive Geographies – short essays about something related, directly or indirectly, to my research. I’ve been posting these weekly through 2025. I could have predicted the three on Foucault would get the … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, David Farrell Krell, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Gillian Rose, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Umberto Eco | Leave a comment

Elisabeth Raucq, animal names and approaches to Indo-European vocabulary

Posted on April 13, 2025 by stuartelden

In the preface to the second edition of his Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil mentions some of the people who attended the lecture course which became the book. Delivered at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1938-39, this was the last year … Continue reading →

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

Who translated Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things?

Posted on April 6, 2025 by stuartelden

Who translated Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things? The original English edition, published by Pantheon in 1970 (and Tavistock in the UK) has the title The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, and under the author name says “A … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories | 9 Comments

The Territory of the Vocabulary and the Vocabulary of Territory: Emile Benveniste 

Posted on March 30, 2025 by stuartelden

If I was writing The Birth of Territory again, I would certainly have found a little space for a brief discussion of Émile Benveniste and his Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, now available in English again as the Dictionary of Indo-European Concepts and Society and open access … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Reinhart Koselleck, Sunday Histories, Territory, Terror and Territory, The Birth of Territory | 6 Comments

Michel Foucault and Richard Sennett’s 1980 NYU seminar on “Sexuality and Solitude” – some notes on attendance and readings

Posted on March 23, 2025 by stuartelden

The “Sexuality and Solitude” lecture was delivered by Richard Sennett and Michel Foucault to the New York Institute for the Humanities on 20 November 1980 at 5.30pm. It was held in the Tishman Auditorium of Vanderbilt Hall on Washington Square. … Continue reading →

Posted in Edward Said, Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Hannah Arendt, David Farrell Krell and the early English translations of Heidegger

Posted on March 16, 2025 by stuartelden

Some years ago, when I was working on Heidegger, I read David Farrell Krell’s “Work Sessions with Martin Heidegger” essay. These were sessions in which Krell discussed some of Heidegger’s vocabulary and worked with him on possible English renderings, as … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, David Farrell Krell, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 4 Comments