In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

JHIdeas
  • 4.6 (10)
  • HISTORY
  • UPDATED SEMIMONTHLY

In Theory is the podcast of the Journal of the History of Ideas blog. The hosts of the JHI Blog team interview intellectual scholars in the fields of philosophy, literature, art history, natural and social sciences, religion, and political thought about their latest books and works. The aim of the JHI podcast is to highlight the huge diversity of intellectual history at university departments across the world.

  1. Parting Gifts of Empire: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Esmat Elhalaby

    6H AGO

    Parting Gifts of Empire: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Esmat Elhalaby

    For this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Esmat Elhalaby about his first book, "Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at the Dawn of Decolonization" (University of California Press, 2025), which offers a pathbreaking perspective on the under-explored relationship between Arab and Indian intellectuals throughout the twentieth century and the era of decolonization. Their conversation charts the various forms of knowledge production that arose from these two regions and their shared experiences of imperialism, contemporary critiques of cosmopolitanism, and how else scholars might write global intellectual histories in the present.

    1h 19m
  2. Harvests of Liberation: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Ahmad Shokr

    JAN 28

    Harvests of Liberation: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Ahmad Shokr

    On this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Ahmad Shokr about his monograph, "Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt" (Stanford University Press, 2025). In "Harvests of Liberation," Shokr examines Egyptian decolonization through one of the nation’s most valuable commodities: cotton. In so doing, he weaves a history comprised of various strands and passed through numerous hands—from colonial advisors and nationalist leaders, to agrarian reformers and rural workers—to demonstrate how changes in the cotton economy ultimately led Egyptian nationalists to “embrace policies of land reform and industrialization and adopt a new conception of history.”

    54 min
  3. Hayek's Bastards: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quinn Slobodian

    JAN 21

    Hayek's Bastards: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quinn Slobodian

    In this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quinn Slobodian on his latest book, "Hayek's Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right" (Zone Books, 2025). Here, Slobodian looks to the likes of Murray Rothbard, Charles Murray, and Javier Milei and their (mis)readings of Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises to reveal the entangled relationship between neoliberalism after the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the Far Right today.

    1h 13m
  4. The Age of Choice: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Sophia Rosenfeld

    10/29/2025

    The Age of Choice: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Sophia Rosenfeld

    In this most recent episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sophia Rosenfeld about her new book The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life (Princeton University Press, 2025). Her book explores how the idea of making a choice from a menu of options arranged by someone else became synonymous with what it meant to be free between the early modern period and the 20th century, via shifts to consumer culture, religious life, romance, and reproduction.

    1h 5m
  5. Liberty as Independence: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quentin Skinner

    09/10/2025

    Liberty as Independence: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quentin Skinner

    Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quentin Skinner on his new book Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal (Cambridge University Press, 2025). In this book, Skinner traces how liberty as a political ideal became tied to independence and the absence of coercion through the political upheavals of early modern England, debates about absolute monarchy, the American Revolution, discussions of women's independence under the law, and the role of slavery in defining what it meant to be free.

    43 min
  6. The Internal Colony: Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sam Klug

    07/28/2025

    The Internal Colony: Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sam Klug

    In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sam Klug about his new book The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2025). In this book, Klug explores how the process of decolonization in the 1940s–70s transformed US debates about the role of race in American life, via the analogy of the “internal colony.” The comparison between how race operated in the US and how colonialism functioned in the world was taken up by activists, social scientists, and policymakers alike, and transformed how Black social movements and the US government approached their respective attempts to change American society at the level of race, class, and global politics.

    1h 8m
  7. Spaces of Anticolonialism: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Stephen Legg

    06/25/2025

    Spaces of Anticolonialism: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Stephen Legg

    In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Stephen Legg about his new book, "Spaces of Anticolonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities" (University of Georgia Press, 2025). In the book, Legg provides a study of Indian anti-colonialism in the decades before Independence that foregrounds the spatially-mediated and bottom-up politics of old and New Delhi’s poor, its middle classes, and the prominent anti-colonial figures of the Indian National Congress, including especially the women of the anti-colonial movement. He centers the concept of parrhesia (from the later lectures of Michel Foucault) to arrive at an account of the governmentality of anti-colonialism in the years between mass civil disobedience and the Quit India Movement.

    49 min
  8. The Architects of Dignity: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Kevin Pham

    06/18/2025

    The Architects of Dignity: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Kevin Pham

    Disha Karnad Jani interviews Kevin Pham, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, about his recent book, The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford University Press, 2024).  In his book, Pham traces the evolution of Vietnamese political thought through six figures, Phan Bội Châu, Phan Chu Trinh, Nguyễn An Ninh, Phạm Quỳnh, Hồ Chí Minh, and Nguyễn Mạnh Tường. He explores how across the 19th and 20th centuries, as generations of Vietnamese thinkers responded to and organized against French and US colonialism, they debated distinct and powerful ways to conceptualize politics, mobilize their people, organize their society, and build a nation through decolonization.

    42 min
See All (67)

Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
10 Ratings

About

In Theory is the podcast of the Journal of the History of Ideas blog. The hosts of the JHI Blog team interview intellectual scholars in the fields of philosophy, literature, art history, natural and social sciences, religion, and political thought about their latest books and works. The aim of the JHI podcast is to highlight the huge diversity of intellectual history at university departments across the world.

Information

You Might Also Like