Category: Call for Papers

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Call for Papers

CfP: The JHI 2023 Graduate Symposium

The Intellectual History of Labor

The Journal of the History of Ideas and the JHI Blog invite graduate students from all institutions, disciplines, and stages of their degree to propose papers for our fifth-annual Graduate Student Symposium to be held via video conference on Saturday, September 9, 2023. The event aims to convene a diverse group of graduate students from different disciplines working on a variety of topics, periods, genres, and regions.

The 2023 symposium will explore and historicize the complex, multivalent, and ever-evolving concepts of labor and work. The JHI Blog welcomes paper proposals that rethink labor as a central, creative concept explaining critical problems of the past, with potential to improve our future.

Papers might engage with such questions as:

·   What would an intellectual history of labor look like? How have different intellectual traditions conceptualized and interpreted labor?

·   How can we historicize the divisions between different forms of labor? How should we write histories including various forms of labor: domestic, women’s, enslaved, and others?

·   How is the commodification of labor related to the emergence of global capitalism and empire? How has anticapitalist thought criticized waged work, domination, and exploitation?

·   How has labor been related to political and social divisions, hierarchies, and conflicts? What has been the role of labor movements in the development of political ideas? How can creative and ecological labor bring forth a socially just world and resist the Capitalocene?

Proposals should be no more than 500 words long and make clear how the paper responds to this call, the argument it intends to make, and the source base. Please also acknowledge the project’s context (e.g., is it a seminar paper, a dissertation chapter, article to be submitted to a journal, a fledgling idea, etc.).

Please send your paper proposal along with a CV in a Word doc file to blogjhi@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is 24 April 2023. We will notify selected participants by 15 May 2023.

The symposium asks more of participants than typical conferences do, and hopes to provide more as well. Before the event, each participant will pre-circulate an article-length paper (7,000–9,000 words). The event will consist of several sessions conceived as “workshops.” Participants are expected to read and annotate one another’s papers before the event, to inform and promote lively, substantive discussion and provide suggestions for revision and continued research.

All questions can be directed to the JHI Blog editors at blogjhi@gmail.com.

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Call for Papers

CfP: The JHI 2022 Graduate Symposium

Ideas in/about Interaction

The Journal of the History of Ideas, the JHI Blog, and the University of Pennsylvania invite graduate students from all institutions, disciplines, and stages of their degree to propose papers for our fourth annual Graduate Student Symposium on “Ideas in/about Interaction” on Friday, May 6, 2022 at the University of Pennsylvania. The symposium coincides with and explores the theme of this year’s JHI Lovejoy Lecture, to be delivered immediately following the symposium by Professor Ann Blair (Department of History, Harvard University).

The JHI Blog invites paper proposals that address collaboration and co-authorship in the history of ideas. The event aims to convene a diverse group of graduate students from different disciplines working on a variety of topics, periods, genres, and regions. For the purposes of the symposium, we conceive of authorship as both a conceptual framework and a set of practices that claim authority over particular intellectual arrangements.

Papers might engage with such questions as: 

  • Who is considered an author in intellectual history? What practices and interventions are recognized as authorial in historical records? Why are some practices and interventions considered authorial, while others are not?   
  • How can we render explicit the nascent power hierarchies in collaborative intellectual production? How have historical subjects conceived of “intellectual collaboration”? What does intellectual history look like from the vantage point of “the assistant”?
  • How does intersectional identities (and related power structures), such as those of class, gender, race, caste, and ethnicity, shape intellectual production? 
  • How can intellectual history contribute to decentering the myth of the author as a lone individual? Which methodologies offer insights into the interpersonal, interactive process behind fully formed intellectual frameworks? 

Exploring these questions, relevant proposals may address topics including but not limited to: histories about collaboration and histories that have been written collaboratively; invisible intellectual labor; the politics and context of collaborations and co-authorship; and the place of editorial work in intellectual production.

Proposals should be no more than 500 words long and make clear how the paper responds to this call, the argument it intends to make, the source base, and how this project fits into the larger work of the author (e.g. a seminar paper, dissertation chapter, article to be submitted to a journal, fledgling idea).

Please send your paper proposal along with a one-page CV to blogjhi@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is January 10, 2022. We will notify selected participants in early February 2022. 

The symposium is tentatively planned to take place in person, with the flexibility to go hybrid or fully online should the situation require. Some travel support for invited participants is available. Each participant will pre-circulate an article-length paper in advance. On the day of the symposium, participants will workshop their article-length papers in small break-out groups led by a faculty discussant. All questions can be directed to the JHI Blog editors at blogjhi@gmail.com.

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Call for Papers

CfP: The JHI 2021 Graduate Symposium

Irrational Ideas: Thinking Against Conventions

In his inaugural article, Journal of the History of Ideas co-founder Arthur Lovejoy observed that “an aversion from manifest and admitted irrationality is … by no means the least pervasive or least powerful of emotions in the creature that has long, and with evident gratification, been accustomed to define himself as the rational animal.” He accepted the postulate that logic is “one of the important operative factors in the history of thought” while also insisting that irrationality constitutes an inextricable part of the history of ideas. 

Honoring Lovejoy’s proposition, the JHI Blog invites paper proposals that address irrationality in the history of ideas for its 2021 Graduate Student Symposium. The event aims to convene a diverse group of graduate students from different disciplines working on a variety of topics, periods, genres, and regions. For the purposes of the symposium, we conceive of irrationality not only in narrowly philosophical terms, but more broadly as a description of research practices and intellectual interventions that contest hegemonic methods and explore the possibilities afforded by diverse ways of making knowledge. 

Accepted participants will be asked to pre-circulate an article-length paper in advance of the Symposium. Papers might engage with such questions as: 

  • How have historical subjects justified practices and interventions by reference to principles beyond “reason”?
  • What can intellectual history tell us about the difference between “irrational” and “non-rational” ideas and knowledge? How have historical subjects drawn this distinction?
  • How have established methods of evidence and justification been challenged as fundamentally “irrational” by heterodox thinkers? What do such accusations tell us about the historical conditions in which claims to rationality become ubiquitous?

Exploring these questions, relevant proposals may address topics including but not limited to: science and pseudoscience; utopias and dystopias; paradigm shifts; misunderstandings and (intentional) misreadings.

Proposals should be no more than 500 words long and make clear how the paper responds to this call, the argument it intends to make, the source base, and how this project fits into the larger work of the author (e.g. a seminar paper, dissertation chapter, article to be submitted to a journal, fledgling idea).

Please send your paper proposal along with a one-page CV to blogjhi@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is February 28, 2021. We will notify selected participants by early April 2021. 

All questions can be directed to the JHI Blog editors at blogjhi@gmail.com. 

About the Virtual Symposium format:

In light of the ongoing pandemic, the 2021 symposium will follow the precedent set by our 2020 symposium and take place entirely online on Saturday, June 26, 2021. Each participant will pre-circulate an article-length paper in advance and record a 15-minute panel presentation based on their papers that will be hosted on our website and made available to registered participants two weeks before the symposium. On the day of the symposium, participants will first workshop their article-length papers in small break-out groups led by a faculty discussant and then convene for a joint Q&A session that will be open to registered members of the public.

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Call for Papers Intellectual history

Bring out your Papers

The Journal of the History of Ideas, the JHI Blog, and the University of Pennsylvania invite graduate students from all institutions, disciplines, and stages of their degree to propose papers for our second annual Graduate Student Symposium on The Ends of Text on Friday, May 1, 2020 at the University of Pennsylvania.

The symposium coincides with and explores the theme of this year’s annual JHI Lovejoy Lecture, to be delivered immediately following the symposium by Professor Ann Blair (Department of History, Harvard University).

Where does a text end? Why does it end where and how it does? How do the factors that shape the size of the text influence the production, spread, and reception of the ideas it carries?

With these broad queries in mind, we invite papers that interpret “text” (within reason) as it appears in a range of forms. For instance: the written or printed word on the page; non-alphabetic stores and depictions of information (e.g., maps, astrological charts, non-alphabetic communication systems); archives; digital media; oral traditions; art.

Papers might engage with the following questions:

  • How do constraints of genre or of the methods and media of production shape the length, scope, and various material features of a text?
  • How do those constraints influence the content, circulation, and reception of a text?
  • How have these constraints or boundaries changed over time?
  • What can they show us about the social capital or position of authors? about the role of printers or other producers of the material text? and/or the expectations of readers?

The symposium will convene a diverse group of graduate students from different disciplines working on a variety of topics, periods, and regions. Each participant will pre-circulate an article-length paper. At the symposium, participants will deliver 15-minute panel presentations based on their papers. Later in the day, participants will workshop their article-length papers in smaller break-out groups.

The break-out workshops will include ample time for discussion of each paper, moderated by a faculty discussant. Participants will be invited to recraft their papers as posts for the JHI Blog. Please send your paper proposal (fewer than 500 words) and one-page CV to blogjhi@gmail.com by December 15. The proposal should make clear how your paper responds to this call, the argument you intend to make, your source base, and how this project fits into your work (e.g., a seminar paper, dissertation chapter, article to be submitted to a journal, fledgling idea). We will notify selected participants by the end of January 2020. Funding reimbursement for some transportation expenses will be available.

All questions can be directed to the JHI Blog editors at blogjhi@gmail.com.

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Call for Papers

CfP: Journal of the History of Ideas Graduate Symposium (May 2019)

JHI Symposium CfP