New Books in Intellectual History

When Charles Darwin returned to Britain from the Beagle voyage in 1836, the most talked-about scientific books of the day were the Bridgewater Treatises. This series of eight works was funded by a bequest of the last Earl of Bridgewater and written by leading men of science appointed by the president of the Royal Society to explore “the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation.” Securing public attention beyond all expectations, the series offered Darwin’s generation a range of approaches to one of the great questions of the age: how to incorporate the newly emerging disciplinary sciences into Britain’s overwhelmingly Christian culture.In Reading the Book of Nature: How Eight Best Sellers Reconnected Christianity and the Sciences on the Eve of the Victorian Age (U Chicago Press, 2022), Jonathan R. Topham examines how and to what extent the series contributed to a sense of congruence between Christianity and the sciences in the generation before the fabled Victorian conflict between science and religion. Building on the distinctive insights of book history and paying close attention to the production, circulation, and use of the books, Topham offers new perspectives on early Victorian science and the subject of science and religion as a whole.Jonathan R. Topham is professor of history of science at the University of Leeds, UK.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In the second half of the 19th century, both professional and amateur archaeologists, surveyors, and explorers of the “periphery” of the Russian Empire became increasingly interested in the perceived ancient nomadic histories of Siberia, Central Asia, and Ukraine. Their excavations of “nomadic sites” associated with the Scythians or the Mongol Empire were aimed not just at scientific investigation and scholarly inquiry, but were also born out of and contributed to discourses around modernity, race, ethnicity, and nationhood during the later days of the Russian Empire’s colonial expansion. Ismael Biyashev’s PhD research (University of Illinois-Chicago, 2023) charts the emergence, historical development, and global networks of the field of “nomadic archaeology,” examining how members of the Russian intellectual elite perceived and presented a nomadic past as a means of articulating contemporary Russian identity and visions for the future.For further open-access reading on this topic, see Ismael’s “Peripheral Histories” blog post here.Maggie Freeman is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture at MIT. She researches uses of architecture by nomadic peoples and historical interactions of nomads and empires, with a focus on the modern Middle East. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In Colorblind Tools: Global Technologies of Racial Power (Northwestern UP, 2022), Marzia Milazzo offers a transnational account of anti-Blackness and white supremacy that pushes against the dominant emphasis on historical change pervading current racial theory. This emphasis on change, she contends, misses critical lessons from the past.Bringing together a capacious archive of texts on race produced in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, the United States, and South Africa from multiple disciplines and genres, Milazzo uncovers transnational continuities in structural racism and white supremacist discourse from the inception of colonial modernity to the present. In the process, she traces the global workings of what she calls colorblind tools: technologies and strategies that at once camouflage and reproduce white domination. Whether examining Rijno van der Riet's defense of slavery in the Cape Colony, discourses of racial mixture in Latin American eugenics and their reverberations in contemporary scholarship, the pitfalls of white "antiracism," or Chicana indigenist aesthetics, Milazzo illustrates how white people collectively disavow racism to maintain power across national boundaries, and how anti-Black and colonial logics can be reproduced even in some decolonial literatures. Milazzo's groundbreaking study proves that colorblindness is not new, nor is it a subtype of racist ideology or a hallmark of our era. It is a constitutive technology of racism—a tool the master cannot do without.Omari Averette-Phillips is a History Educator and an Independent scholar based in Southern California. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

David Bromwich, a professor of English at Yale University, discusses the intellectual life of Edmund Burke, highlighting his defense of disenfranchised minorities, critique of English society, and advocacy for peace with America. The podcast explores Burke's social connections, views on the French Revolution, and his unique understanding of social questions. It also delves into the potential threat of the American colonies, Burke's political engagement, and his observations on democratic despotism during the French Revolution.

The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism, brought forth what became a dominant narrative: that administrative coordination by trained professional managers is essential to the efficient running of organizations both public and private. And yet if managerialism was the apotheosis of administrative efficiency, why did both its practice and the accompanying narrative lie in ruins by the end of the century? In The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise (Princeton UP, 2023), Richard Langlois offers an alternative version: a comprehensive and nuanced reframing and reassessment of the economic, institutional, and intellectual history of the managerial era.Langlois argues that managerialism rose to prominence not because of its inherent superiority but because of its contingent value in a young and rapidly developing American economy. The structures of managerialism solidified their dominance only because the century's great catastrophes of war, depression, and war again superseded markets, scrambled relative prices, and weakened market-supporting institutions. By the end of the twentieth century, Langlois writes, these market-supporting institutions had reemerged to shift advantage toward entrepreneurial and market-driven modes of organization.This magisterial new account of the rise and fall of managerialism holds significant implications for contemporary debates about industrial and antitrust policies and the role of the corporation in the twenty-first century.Richard Langlois was born and raised in northeastern Connecticut and educated at Williams, Yale, and Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in 1981 from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford. His primary work has been in the economics of organization, where he has long been pushing the theory of dynamic transaction costs and the theory of modular systems, as well as in economic and business history. His 1992 history of the microcomputer industry won the Newcomen Award as the best paper in the Business History Review. Previous books include Firms, Markets, and Economic Change: a Dynamic Theory of Business Institutions (Routledge, 1995, with Paul L. Robertson) and The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (The Graz Schumpeter Lectures, Routledge 2007), which won the Schumpeter Prize of the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society.In this podcast, he discussed the main themes in his most recent book and how it sits within overall discussions about the large corporation, his views on institutions and the nature of American-led capitalism in the 20th century. This is possible through a reinterpretation of a large body of economic and business history rather than archival or other primary source material.As mentioned during the podcast:-Chandler, A. (1990) Scale and Scope. -Coase, R. (1937) The Nature of the Firm.-Langlois, R. (2003) The Vanishing Hand.-Langlois, R. (2004). The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Graz Lectures).Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Melissa Shew and Kimberly Garchar's book Philosophy for Girls: An Invitation to the Life of Thought (Oxford UP, 2020) empowers its readers by exploring enduring, challenging, and timely philosophical issues in new essays written by expert women philosophers. The book will inspire and entice these philosophers' younger counterparts, curious readers of all genders, and all who support equity in philosophy.If asked to envision a philosopher, people might imagine a bearded man, probably Greek, perhaps in a toga, pontificating about abstract ideas. Or they might think of that same man in the Enlightenment, gripping a quill pen and pouring universal truths onto a page. They may even call to mind a much more modern man, wearing a black sweater and smoking a cigarette in a Paris café, expressing existential angst in a new novel or essay.What people are unlikely to picture, though, is a woman. Women have historically been excluded from the discipline of philosophy and remain largely marginalized in contemporary textbooks and anthologies. The under-representation of women in secondary and post-secondary curricula makes it harder for young women to see themselves as future philosophers. In fact, it makes it harder for all people to engage the valuable contributions that women have made and continue to make to intellectual thought. While some progress has been made in building a more inclusive world of philosophy, especially in the last fifty years, important work remains to be done.Philosophy for Girls helps correct the pervasive and problematic omission of women from philosophy. Divided into four sections that connect to major, primary fields in philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, social and political philosophy, and ethics), this anthology is unique: chapters are all written by women, and each chapter opens with an anecdote about a girl or woman from mythology, history, art, literature, or science to introduce chapter topics. Further, nearly all primary and secondary sources used in the chapters are written by women philosophers. The book is written in a rigorous, academic spirit but in lively and engaging prose, making serious philosophical insights accessible to readers who are new to philosophy.This book appeals to a wide audience. Individual readers will find value in these pages--especially girls and women ages 16-24, as well as university and high school educators and students who want a change from standard anthologies that include few or no women. The book's contributors both represent and map the diverse landscape of philosophy, highlighting its engagement with themes of gender and equity. In doing so, they encourage philosophers current and future philosophers to explore new territory and further develop the topography of the field.Philosophy for Girls is a rigorous yet accessible entry-point to philosophical contemplation designed to inspire a new generation of philosophers.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

As wars of liberation in Africa and Asia shook the post-war world, a cohort of activists from East and Central Africa, specifically the region encompassing present-day Malawi, Zambia, Uganda and mainland Tanzania, asked what role they could play in the global anticolonial landscape. In African Activists in a Decolonising World: The Making of an Anticolonial Culture, 1952-1966 (Cambridge UP, 2023), Ismay Milford presents a social and intellectual history of decolonisation and anticolonialism in the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on multi-archival research, she brings together their trajectories for the first time, reconstructing the anticolonial culture that underpinned their journeys to Delhi, Cairo, London, Accra and beyond. Forming committees and publishing pamphlets, these activists worked with pan-African and Afro-Asian solidarity projects, Cold War student internationals, spiritual internationalists and diverse pressure groups. Milford argues that a focus on their everyday labour and knowledge production highlights certain limits of transnational and international activism, opening up a critical - albeit less heroic - perspective on the global history of anticolonial work and thought.Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

After 50 years of the publication of The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950, Martin Jay is interviewed by his Chinese translator SUN Yizhou (孙一洲), discussing the book, generational and globalized critical theories and methodology of intellectual history. The 2nd Chinese edition of the book will be published by Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House (上海文艺出版社) in 2023, the year marks the 100th anniversary of the Institute for Social Research. You can find a transcript of the interview here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Yamin Levy's The Mysticism of Andalusia: Exploring HaRambam's Mystical Tradition (MHC Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking book that delves into the mystical tradition of Andalusia and specifically of Maimonides. Unlike Kabalah and the European mystical traditions, Andalusian mysticism is rooted in clear Halakhic and philosophical principles devoid of superstition and magic. This book examines Maimonides works which serve as a guide for those interested in pursuing mystical union with G-d. Topics such as prophecy, love and awe of G-d, silent meditation, the role of prophets, and the spiritual aspects of Jewish rituals are all explored in this book. The Mysticism of Andalusia offers a refreshing perspective and path forward for all who desire deep spiritual fulfillment without the rejection of the mind and self.Ohad Fedida lives in Miami and is a psychology research and clinical assistant. He is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology, and is involved in a wide array of initiatives and studies from legal philosophy, Jewish programming, and psychology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Today’s guest is Toril Moi, whose book Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies After Wittgenstein, Austin and Cavell (University of Chicago Press, 2017) returns to three twentieth-century figures in ordinary language philosophy to renew how we think about style and argumentation. Revolution of the Ordinary brings together a diverse archive of primary sources, from the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar to the 1970s TV show All in the Family.I am excited to welcome Toril to the podcast today. Toril is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy, and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Toril’s previous books include Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory and Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. She has served as Research Professor at Norway’s National Library for the last five years.John Yargo is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He earned a PhD in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in the environmental humanities and early modern culture. In 2023, his dissertation won the J. Leeds Barroll Prize, given by the Shakespeare Association of America. His peer-reviewed articles have been published or are forthcoming in the Journal for Early Modern Culture Studies, Early Theatre, Studies in Philology, and Shakespeare Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history