Interventions | The Intellectual History Podcast

Interventions
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What do intellectual historians currently investigate? And why is this relevant for us today? These are some of the questions our podcast series, led by graduate students at the University of Cambridge, seeks to explore. It aims to introduce intellectual historians and their work to everyone with an interest in history and politics. Do join in on our conversations! (The theme song of "Interventions | The Intellectual History Podcast" was created at jukedeck.com)

  1. The Curious Case of Martin Crusius (with Richard Calis)

    DEC 8

    The Curious Case of Martin Crusius (with Richard Calis)

    Martin Crusius (1526-1607) spent most of his life in the Lutheran town of Tübingen. While there, he became Europe's foremost expert on Ottoman Greece. Drawing on hundreds of conversations he held with the Greek Orthodox alms-seekers who visited his home, he painted a picture of a people unparalleled in its richness and scope. Yet he also constructed a narrative of the religious and cultural decline of Greece which shows his self-proclaimed philhellenism to have been entangled with a disdain for Ottoman culture and a desire to spread his Lutheran faith.  Join Richard Calis, whose research into Crusius’s intellectual world has shed new light on the history of Protestant reform, ethnography, and early modern cultural encounters, as he takes us into the mind and home of one of sixteenth-century Germany’s most original scholars.  Hosted by Sam Tchorek-Bentall Produced by Joshua Shortman

    40 min
  2. Mary Wollstonecraft: The Honest Educator (with Sylvana Tomaselli)

    OCT 22

    Mary Wollstonecraft: The Honest Educator (with Sylvana Tomaselli)

    By her death in 1797 at the age of 38, Mary Wollstonecraft had produced a body of work unmatched for its honesty and critical acumen. In a society where marriage often amounted to legal prostitution, Wollstonecraft confronted the ways in which property and power distorted lives and corrupted our most essential relationships: as human beings, men and women, mothers and children. Following a revolution in France that failed to deliver, Wollstonecraft came to see education as the only viable route to a world in which love and liberty could flourish. How we might imagine this world — which of Wollstonecraft's ideas capture it best, and how her vision was different from our own — are questions addressed by Sylvana Tomaselli, a historian who has long been critical to our understanding of Enlightenment political thought, and the role played by women within it. Hosted by Sam Tchorek-Bentall Produced by Joshua Shortman

    57 min
  3. African-American Ideas about Race (with Mia Bay)

    SEP 17

    African-American Ideas about Race (with Mia Bay)

    After the founding of the American Republic, African-American Intellectuals never accepted passively the narratives of racial difference maintained by the defenders of slavery and segregation. At a time when the belief in human equality was under attack from religious reactionaries and scientific innovators alike, Black thinkers succeeded in vindicating the unity of the human community as a divinely created whole, in constructing their own science of the races in opposition to white theories of human inequality, and eventually in brining about the demise of the idea of race as a legitimate object of scientific inquiry. Join Mia Bay, one of the most penetrating authors writing on American history today, as she leads us along the twisted paths which ideas of race have taken since the nineteenth century, pointing along the way to the place of Thomas Jefferson in Black American thought and the work of the great anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells.

    1 hr
  4. Liberty as Independence (with Quentin Skinner)

    JUL 21

    Liberty as Independence (with Quentin Skinner)

    Sometime in the eighteenth century, a great transformation took place in the language of liberty. Since the days of the Roman Republic, to be free had meant to be independent of the arbitrary will of another. You enjoyed freedom if nobody could impose their will on you without your prior consent. You were free if you were your own master, and you were unfree to the extent that you answered to anyone else.  This was the concept of liberty which dominated political discourse in England until the outbreak of the American Revolution and Revolutionary War. How it gave way in the wake of the Declaration of Independence to the idea of freedom as absence of restraint — to the concept of negative liberty — is the question that Quentin Skinner, the doyen of intellectual historians in the English-speaking world, attempts to answer. In doing so, he also questions whether the road that was taken was the right one for a democratic society to take. In order to be free, is it enough that we encounter no obstruction on our way, or is something more, and more fundamental, required?

    1h 1m
  5. Abolitionist Ideas: Battling the Slave Trade in Britain

    JUN 9

    Abolitionist Ideas: Battling the Slave Trade in Britain

    If you visited Britain around 1700, you’d find hardly a single advocate of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. You’d hear the institution of slavery described as a moral evil, but no one would tell you that it could be done away with if only people put their minds to it. Slavery was supported by monarchy, government, church, and public opinion in general. Yet in 1807, the trade in enslaved Africans was abolished throughout the British Empire. How and why this momentous shift in public opinion took place remains a topic of heated debate, with the roles of material interest and lofty idealism proving difficult to disentangle.  Join John Coffey, one of the finest historians of religious and political ideas working in Britain today, as he grapples with the question of British slavery’s dramatic, if incomplete, eclipse.

    1h 11m
  6. Carl Schmitt: The Thoughtful Nazi (with Lars Vinx and Samuel Zeitlin)

    APR 27

    Carl Schmitt: The Thoughtful Nazi (with Lars Vinx and Samuel Zeitlin)

    Why is Carl Schmitt one of the most widely read political theorists of the twentieth century? A lifelong antisemite, a petty careerist, a Nazi ideologue who only avoided being tried at Nuremberg because he wasn’t considered important enough, Schmitt was an unlikely candidate for canonical fame. And yet from today’s perspective, few other authors present as many opportunities to think through the struggles of the twentieth century. From the besieged cities of the First World War to the global delusions of the Cold War superpowers, the stuff of Schmitt’s thought both excites and repels, forcing us to face a world in which liberal democracy is the enemy and fool.  Join Lars Vinx and Samuel Zeitlin as they travel in time from Schmitt’s early years in Catholic Westphalia to his spectral afterlife in today’s divided world, shedding light on his theories of dictatorship, the political, sovereignty, and law.

    1h 54m
  7. Indigenous Ideas: A Global Perspective (with Saliha Belmessous)

    MAR 4

    Indigenous Ideas: A Global Perspective (with Saliha Belmessous)

    In 1686, a French witness spoke openly of a Native American declaration of independence. ‘We have to assume’, he said, ‘that the Iroquois do not accept any master’. Claims such as this were made frequently throughout the history of European colonialism, forming a rich tapestry of indigenous ideas. Although often dismissed by historians as badly documented and politically irrelevant fictions, these ideas helped shape the destiny of peoples and polities across the globe, from New Zealand and New Caledonia to Ontario and Quebec.  Join Saliha Belmessous, a leading light in the emerging field of indigenous intellectual history, as she looks at the legacy of the Treaty of Waitangi, visits the insulated offices of Victorian lawyers, and reflects on the interplay of colonial cooperation and violence.

    1 hr
  8. Slavery, Empire, and John Locke (with Mark Goldie)

    FEB 4

    Slavery, Empire, and John Locke (with Mark Goldie)

    John Locke continues to excite controversy. For American liberals, he is an honorary Founding Father, one of the architects of modern democracy. In their view, as Allan Bloom put it, ‘the whole world is divided into two parts, one of which traces its intellectual lineage back to Locke and the other to Marx’. For his critics on the left, by contrast, he is an apologist for slavery and European imperialism, his thought a reminder that liberalism and empire were born twins. But is either of these views really true? Perhaps if we look at Locke’s practical engagement with English colonialism, a more complicated picture will emerge.  Join Mark Goldie, one of the preeminent historians of seventeenth century political thought, as he sheds light on Locke’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, his relationship with England’s American colonies, and his views on empire and enslavement, asking how it was that the so-called father of liberalism could have accepted the absolute subjugation of other human beings.

    1h 6m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
14 Ratings

About

What do intellectual historians currently investigate? And why is this relevant for us today? These are some of the questions our podcast series, led by graduate students at the University of Cambridge, seeks to explore. It aims to introduce intellectual historians and their work to everyone with an interest in history and politics. Do join in on our conversations! (The theme song of "Interventions | The Intellectual History Podcast" was created at jukedeck.com)

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