Category Archives: Uncategorized

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, Jean Wahl, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Kasia Szymanska, Translation Multiples: From Global Culture to Postcommunist Democracy – Princeton University Press, May 2025 and interview at Journal of the History of Ideas blog

Kasia Szymanska, Translation Multiples: From Global Culture to Postcommunist Democracy – Princeton University Press, May 2025 In Translation Multiples, Kasia Szymanska examines what happens when translators, poets, and artists expose the act of translation by placing parallel translation variants next to … Continue reading →

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Andrew Bowie, Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy – Oxford University Press, paperback May 2025

Andrew Bowie, Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy – Oxford University Press, paperback May 2025 Much of contemporary philosophy, especially in the analytical tradition, regards aesthetics as of lesser significance than epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Yet, in Aesthetic Dimensions … Continue reading →

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World – Yale University Press, August 2024

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World – Yale University Press, August 2024 How modern data-driven government originated in the creation and use of administrative archives in the British … Continue reading →

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Zakir Paul, Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Valéry, and Modern French Criticism – Princeton University Press, August 2024

Zakir Paul, Disarming Intelligence: Proust, Valéry, and Modern French Criticism – Princeton University Press, August 2024 In the late nineteenth century, psychologists and philosophers became intensely interested in the possibility of quantifying, measuring, and evaluating “intelligence,” and using it to … Continue reading →

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Günther Anders, The Obsolescence of the Human, ed. Christian Dries and Christopher John Müller, trans. Christopher John Müller – University of Minnesota Press, December 2025

Günther Anders, The Obsolescence of the Human, ed. Christian Dries and Christopher John Müller, trans. Christopher John Müller – University of Minnesota Press, December 2025 Now available in English—one of the twentieth century’s most important works on the philosophy of … Continue reading →

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Kevin Potter, Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Politics of Motion – Edinburgh University Press, paperback May 2025

Kevin Potter, Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Politics of Motion – Edinburgh University Press, paperback May 2025 Since the 1980s, readers and scholars alike have celebrated migrant literature for not only depicting migration, but for inspiring reflections … Continue reading →

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Dmirti Shalin, Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination – Routledge, December 2024 and New Books Network discussion

Dmirti Shalin, Erving Manuel Goffman: Biographical Sources of Sociological Imagination – December 2024 Erving Goffman is the most cited American sociologist. There is no shortage of studies exploring Goffman’s scholarship but no extant biography of Erving Goffman. The chief reason … Continue reading →

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Anna Jurkevics, Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy beyond Sovereign Bounds – Oxford University Press, April 2025

Anna Jurkevics, Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy beyond Sovereign Bounds – Oxford University Press, April 2025 Contested Territory presents a critical, non-sovereign theory of territorial rights capable of responding to border-defying global crises such as land dispossession, mass … Continue reading →

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Fernanda Gallo, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900 – Cambridge University Press, September 2024 and New Books Network discussion

Fernanda Gallo, Hegel and Italian Political Thought: The Practice of Ideas, 1832-1900 – Cambridge University Press, September 2024 I’ve shared news of the book before, but there is now a New Books network discussion with Lily Goren Across Italy in … Continue reading →

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