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intellectual history


  • Maps are the Record of Humans' Imagination of the World

    by Meredith F. Small

    World maps have always been made without regard for practicality. Useless for navigation or for demarcating ownership, they are imaginative and expressive of a society's view of the world—which makes them important. 


  • For Derby Day, a Note of Caution About Horses and "Races"

    by Mackenzie Cooley

    The thoroughbreds on display at Churchill Downs next Saturday carry on Italian renaissance practices of horse breeding for sport and aesthetic pleasure. But the spectacle warns of another legacy: the fateful transfer of the term "race" from purposefully selected lineages of horses to broad groupings of humans. 



  • The Crisis of the Intellectuals

    by Ibram X. Kendi

    A dire health crisis forced the author to ask what his intellectual work was ultimately for. Intellectuals more broadly need a similar push from the dire state of democracy, and should be assured that when they face pushback about being "illiberal" or "presentist" or violating the traditions of their discipline, they're on the right track. 



  • Moral Panics Around the Humanities Reflect Long-Developing Paradigm Shift

    by Steven Mintz

    The ferocity of attacks on the humanities and academic research as "indoctrination" reflect the recent integration of ideas with long histories in academia into highly visible protest movements. Can humanists connect newer thinking to the established concerns of the humanities for understanding justice or the good life? 



  • Review: The Right-Wing Abuse of Adam Smith

    by Kim Phillips-Fein

    Glory M. Liu's account of Adam Smith's reception in America explains how American politicians read selectively in Smith's capacious writings on political economy and public morality to construct a self-interested view of the market as a natural phenomenon, writes historian Kim Phillips-Fein. 


  • Revisiting Kropotkin 180 Years After His Birth

    by Sam Ben-Meir

    The rise of automation and the concurrent squeeze of workers in the name of profit offer an opportunity to revisit the ideas of Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin as a forward-looking critique of power. 



  • The Decline of Intellectual History is a Problem

    by Steven Mintz

    Ideas matter, and the eclipse of the field of intellectual history puts an understanding of important ones in jeopardy. Even as intellectual history broadens and diversifies, it is still associated with the thoughts of elites.