Category Archives: Sunday Histories

The Friendship between Hannah Arendt and Alexandre Koyré

Posted on March 2, 2025 by stuartelden

Although they both studied in Germany, and were among those who attended Heidegger’s lecture courses in the 1920s, Hannah Arendt and Alexandre Koyré didn’t meet at that time. (Arendt attended lectures in 1924-26 in Marburg; Koyré in 1928-29 in Freiburg.) Their first … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Georges Bataille, Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Sunday Histories | 6 Comments

Walter B. Henning, Robert Oppenheimer, Ernst Kantorowicz, the Institute for Advanced Study and the Khwarezmian Dictionary Project

Posted on February 23, 2025 by stuartelden

Walter Bruno Henning spent part of the 1955-56 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His project at the time was described by him as “Analysis of the Khwarezmian language; collection of material for the Corpus Inscriptionem … Continue reading →

Posted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Sunday Histories | 9 Comments

Ernst Kantorowicz and the California Loyalty Oath

Posted on February 16, 2025 by stuartelden

In 1950, the medieval historian Ernst Kantorowicz privately published, at his own expense, a short book entitled The Fundamental Issue. It cost him $425 – perhaps about $5000 today. It concerned a loyalty oath at the University of California, first proposed … Continue reading →

Posted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Sunday Histories, William Shakespeare | 13 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 26: Benveniste’s late publications; Sunday Histories; beginning archival work in the United States

Posted on February 14, 2025 by stuartelden

Since the last update in December, I’ve been making some good progress on this project. The focus has mainly been on Benveniste’s work in the 1960s. But, as ever, I’ve found myself backtracking to earlier parts of his career and seeing some potentially … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Georges Dumézil, Henri Lefebvre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Understanding Henri Lefebvre | Leave a comment

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

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

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

Benveniste and the Linguistic Circle of Prague

Posted on January 19, 2025 by stuartelden

There are some good histories of the Linguistic Circle of Prague, which met in the years before the Second World War, and which included Russian scholars as well as ones from Czechoslovakia. Jindřich Toman’s The Magic of a Common Language is a particularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Foucault’s 1972 visit to Cornell University

Posted on January 12, 2025 by stuartelden

For his initial trips to the United States, Michel Foucault was often invited by French departments. His visits to SUNY Buffalo in 1970 and 1972, and the first of his multiple visits to the University of California, Berkeley in 1975 … Continue reading →

Posted in Daniel Defert, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Michel Foucault, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault | 14 Comments