On 21 April, Henry Mead delivered a paper entitled ‘The Fall of the Fall in Literary Modernism’ at ‘Inventing the Secular’, a conference in New College, University of Edinburgh, organised by the ‘Literature and Religion’ research group (University of Bergen), the Scottish Network for Religion and Literature (University of Edinburgh), and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (University of Edinburgh).
Henry Mead has published a chapter on Edward Carpenter’s modernist philosophy of history in the essay collection Heresy and Borders in the Twentieth Century, edited by Karina Jakubowicz and Robert Dickins (Routledge, 2021), pp. 28-46. (https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003090649)
We are pleased to annouce our workshop Time and History in Modern Political Thought in Tallinn on the 8 and 9 of July!
We are welcoming abstracts (max 500 words) until the 15th of April to liisi.keedus@tlu.ee or tommaso.giordani@tlu.ee
More information can be found here: TallinnTemporalitiesWorkshop
On the 23 of February, Liisa Bourgeot from the University of Helsinki gave a talk entitled
“Gustav Shpet, Russian phenomenology, time and history”.
The talk was followed by a small reception.
Daniele Monticello has published a chapter entitled ‘Lotman and Deconstructionism’ in The Companion to Juri Lotman: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, eds. Marek Tamm and Peeter Torop (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Link here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/companion-to-juri-lotman-9781350181632/
Liisi Keedus has published an article on the political thought of Swiss theologian Karl Barth, entitled “‘The snake biting its own tail’: Karl Barth on the modern promise of politics”. The piece appears in the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, and is available here.
DATES: 11-15 JULY 2022
The course outlines, discusses, and evaluates the methods for studying intellectual history transnationally. It focuses on the inter-relationship between political, cultural, and intellectual history, and the transference and re-signification of ideas. We ask how best to study the circulation of knowledge, and the reasons for integration, rejection – or ignorance of – certain lines of thought transnationally. We also look at how disciplines like philosophy, semiotics, politics, literary studies, translation studies, etc. can provide tools for intellectual historians. The course addresses general methodological issues and compares the insights of different approaches, yet is also strongly based on historical case studies and tailored to students’ on-going research.
The course gives the students the opportunity to present their own study projects and problems, and to receive feedback in seminars, one-to-one tutorials, and through essay evaluation. The course also strongly promotes and encourages informal communication and exploration of ideas among the participants.
The course is organised in cooperation with the project “Between the Times – Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Inter-War Europe,” based at the School of Humanities.
Course instructors are intellectual historians, cultural historians, literary theorists and philosophers, whose research specializes on conceptual history (e.g. history of concepts of “sovereignty”, “progress”, “revolution”, “violence”, “West”), history of 20th century political thought (e.g. in Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, France, Jewish thought, liberalism and its critics), study of processes of intellectual transfer (e.g. reception and translation studies, emigre studies), political ideologies in European modernisms and avant-gardes, and comparative European intellectual history, among other themes.
– All teachers are innovative researchers, internationally recognised in their respective fields.
– Besides providing general lectures and seminars, the course aims to address each student’s particular research work in proposing methodological options and best practice.
– The course promotes informal communication and exploration of ideas, making time for topically related tours and get-togethers.
Keynotes: Assoc. Prof. Eva Piirimäe, Prof. Georgios Varouxakis
Other teaching/supervising academic staff:
Dr. Tommaso Giordani
Prof. Liisi Keedus
Dr. Henry Mead
Dr. Piret Peiker
TBC
PhD students and dedicated MA students whose postgraduate research focuses on, or draws upon intellectual history.
Minimum bachelor’s degree; knowledge of the English language B2 level or above.
Together with the application, please send your CV and a short (100 words) motivation letter, describing your research project and how you expect it would benefit from this course. The deadline is 1May 2022.
Group size: maximum 15 students. Participants will be selected based on their CV and motivation letter.
Upon full participation and completion of course work students will be awarded 6 ECTS points and a certificate of completion.
In order to complete the course, student needs to:
– Actively participate in discussions
– Do a presentation
– Complete a final essay related to student’s work in progress (3000-5000 words)
50 EUR.
Course participants are provided free Tallinn University Dormitory double room accommodation for up to 10 nights.
CONTACT
tss@tlu.ee, peiker@tlu.ee
9 December 2021, Dr. Piret Peiker participated in the internatio
Tommaso Giordani has published an article in the Autumn issue of Il Pensiero Storico en
titled “Zeev Sternhell, l’antilluminismo, ed il fascismo come possibilità ricorrente“. Written in the Italian language, the article examines the centrality of the Enlightenment/anti-Enlightenment distinction in Zeev’s Sternhell’s work, arguing that it constitutes the conceptual core of the Israeli historian’s oeuvre. A shortened version of the same argument can be found in English in Ideology, Theory, Practice, the blog of the Journal of Political Ideologies, under the title “Fascism as a recurring possibility: Zeev Sternhell, the anti-Enlightenment, and the politics of an intellectual history of modernity“.
On Thursday 28 October 2021, Prof. Liisi Keedus delivered a paper at the ‘European Crisis and Reorientation’ workshop, entitled ‘“A snake biting its own tail”: Karl Barth’s critique of political modernity in its Weimar contexts.’
See link here for details of the paper and the event, an open international workshop on Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief in the cultural and intellectual context of post-WW1 Europe, held at the University of Copenhagen 27-30 October 2021.
