Author Archives: alexchadwick

History in the Humanities and the Social Sciences Workshop 1

Prof. Richard Bourke (Cambridge) and Prof. Quentin Skinner (QMUL) cordially invite you to the first of three AHRC-Funded Workshops on the theme of “History in the Humanities and Social Sciences” to be held on Friday 11 January 2019. Two further Workshops will follow on 22 March and 5 July.

The first Workshop will be held at Jesus College, Cambridge, in Frankopan Hall, 9:30–18:15.

Advance booking here is essential:  http://bit.do/hhssw1. Further information about the Network can be found here: https://hhss.hist.cam.ac.uk. The conference programme is also available here.

Lecturer in the History of Political Thought

The School seeks to appoint a Lecturer in the History of Political Thought, specialising in the ‘long’ twentieth century. This appointment will join the international research cluster formed by the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought, a cross-faculty collaborative venture based in the School of History. The aim of the new appointment is to build on this strength by extending the cluster’s range of research and teaching. Currently, the historians of political thought in the School cover the early modern period, extending from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century to the twentieth century.

By appointing in the twentieth century, the research cluster aims to strengthen further our expertise in the field of political ideas since 1890. The successful candidate will be expected to teach in the general history of political thought and intellectual history at undergraduate level, but to be able to supervise in the twentieth century at Masters and PhD level. Active participation in the activities of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought will be expected.

For more details, please click here.

Georgios Varouxakis ULIP-QMUL Paris Lecture

The University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) are pleased to welcome Professor Georgios Varouxakis, Professor of the History of Political Thought at QMUL, for the first of the ULIP-QMUL Paris Lectures. Professor Varouxakis will be inaugurating this series by addressing the prominent role of the city of Paris in the shaping of the idea of ‘the West’.

The lecture will first offer a brief genealogy of the idea of “the West” as a socio-political idea. The different uses of the term throughout its history will be analyzed and the contexts and reasons for its several metamorphoses will be scrutinized. The differences between the employment of “the West” in English and “l’Occident” in French will be focused on and the impact of French on English uses will be explored. Then the lecture will focus on the most explicit, thorough and systematic elaboration of a concrete idea of “the West” as a self-description (in preference to “Europe” or “Christendom”) and as a political project, in the mid-nineteenth century — with particular emphasis on the thought of the founder of Positivism and Sociology, Auguste Comte. Finally, the lecture will highlight the prominent role of the city of Paris in that story.

For more details, please click here.

7th London Summer School in Intellectual History Keynote Addresses

We are pleased to announce the details of the keynote addresses for the 7th London Summer School in Intellectual History. The keynotes are open to all, but registration is essential.

Opening Keynote Lecture: Tuesday 4th September, Professor Quentin Skinner (QMUL), ‘Interventions and ideologies: an approach to intellectual history’, register here.

Closing Keynote Lecture: Friday 7th September, Professor Barbara Taylor (QMUL), ‘Philosophical Solitude’, register here.

Ideas of Poverty in the Age of Enlightenment

Although the Age of Enlightenment saw the development of radically new approaches to comprehending and reforming society and politics, our current understanding is that the existence of poverty was rarely problematized by eighteenth-century thinkers, writers and officials – notwithstanding that ‘the poor’ made up the clear majority of Europe’s population. This picture only changed in the transformative decade of the 1790s. This conference brings together historians with a wide range of geographical and theoretical expertise to re-examine the ways in which poverty was conceptualised in the social, political and religious discourses of eighteenth-century Europe.

The conference is generously supported by the King’s College London Faculty of Humanities Research Grant Programme, Dept. of History Research Fund and Centre for Enlightenment Studies; University College London’s History Dept. Events Fund; and the Royal Historical Society.

Those wishing to attend are requested to register by emailing Niall O’Flaherty (niall.o’flaherty@kcl.ac.uk) and Robin Mills (robin.mills@ucl.ac.uk) by 31 August. Places are limited and will be offered on a rolling basis. Please click here to download a copy of the conference programme.

Manuscript Workshop on Professor Annelien de Dijn’s Freedom: An Unruly History

Call for Participation: Manuscript Workshop on Professor Annelien de Dijn (University of Utrecht), Freedom: An Unruly History (Harvard University Press, forthcoming).

The Centre for Enlightenment Studies at King’s College London, with support from the Leverhulme Trust, is proud to host a manuscript workshop on Professor de Dijn’s forthcoming intellectual history Freedom: An Unruly History. This will take the form of five hour-long chapter-by-chapter sessions opened by commentators followed by general discussion.

For expressions of interest in attending or for further details please contact robin.mills@ucl.ac.uk. Places are limited so email asap. Participation at this event involves committing to reading as much of the manuscript as possible and attending with the intention to contribute to discussion if possible. Refreshments will be provided and there will be a subsidised dinner for attendees.

Commentators: David Carter (Reading), Valentina Arena (UCL)/Justin Champion (Royal Holloway), Angus Gowland (UCL), Julia Nicholls (KCL), Caroline Ashcroft (QMUL)

Georgios Varouxakis at the Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne

On Wednesday 16 May (16.30-18.30), Professor Georgios Varouxakis will be presenting a paper at the Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, titled « Comment faire la généalogie du concept politique d’Occident ? » as part of the series Séminaire d’histoire de la philosophie politique : « Pour une généalogie des concepts politiques ». For more details, please click here.

Professor Varouxakis will also deliver an invited lecture at the conference on “Mill et la Révolution” at the Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne, taking place on 25 and 26 May 2018. Professor Varouxakis’ lecture is titled ‘“The Revolution…is not English”: What did Mill think he learnt from observing France for half a century?’.

Call for applications: 8th London Summer School in Intellectual History

The London Summer School in Intellectual History

The Annual London Summer School in Intellectual History is a rare opportunity for graduate students to acquire further training in the discipline and its different methodologies, as well as to meet a great number of academics and graduate students working in many different fields in intellectual history and related sub-disciplines. The Annual Summer School, which usually runs in September, includes:

  • Special workshops on methodological approaches to intellectual history
  • Masterclasses discussing texts distributed and read in advance
  • Feedback on current research (following brief student presentations)
  • Advice on writing and publishing
  • A colloquium

Applications are welcome from doctoral students in intellectual history and related disciplines (the history of philosophy, literature, politics, law, political science, Classics) as well as MA/MSc students intending to conduct future research in this area. London is now one of the leading international centres of research and teaching in the history of political thought and intellectual history with a dedicated graduate programme and year-round research seminars, conferences, and workshops. The Summer School, now in its ninth year, is run jointly by University College London (UCL) and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

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Quentin Skinner’s From Humanism to Hobbes

We are pleased to announce the publication of Professor Quentin Skinner’s From Humanism to Hobbes: Studies in Rhetoric and Politics. The collection aims to illustrate the pervasive influence of humanist rhetoric on early-modern literature and philosophy. The first half of the book focuses on the classical rules of judicial rhetoric. One chapter considers the place of these rules in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, while two others concentrate on the technique of rhetorical redescription, pointing to its use in Machiavelli’s The Prince as well as in several of Shakespeare’s plays, notably Coriolanus. The second half of the book examines the humanist background to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. A major new essay discusses his typically humanist preoccupation with the visual presentation of his political ideas, while other chapters explore the rhetorical sources of his theory of persons and personation, thereby offering new insights into his views about citizenship, political representation, rights and obligations and the concept of the state. Continue reading