This selection of essays and interviews reflects the wide range of scholarship published on the blog in 2025.

In an essay in the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Nate Holdren elaborates three levels of analytical abstraction at which intellectual historians invoke the term "political economy," turning our attention to the way that capitalism structurally conditions ignorance of the social totality.

In a new piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Alec Israeli reflects on recent debates on the method and stakes of "high" versus "low" intellectual histories, arguing for a neo-materialist approach that nuances those discursive boundaries. web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2025...

In the JHI forum on political economy, David Vertty considers the intersection between intellectual history and political economy as developed in and around Latin America, focusing on avenues of future research and methodological lessons from their historical, geographic, and conceptual interplay.

In a new piece for the JHI forum on political economy, Federico D’Onofrio discusses the rise of a class of "agricultural economists" as part of a broader trend intersecting with and going beyond "rural modernism" in twentieth-century Europe. @fdonoff.bsky.social

What was the Mau Mau Uprising? In today's essay, Christian Alvarado reconsiders this conflict in 20th-century Kenya through the lens of conspiracy and traces what this narrative rendering (the "Mau Mau conspiracy") reveals about colonialism and anti-communism in the past and our post-truth present.

In a new piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Lotte Liste critically situates Reinhart Koselleck's concept of the Sattelzeit with Adam Smith's philosophy of history. @lottelist.bsky.social

Today on the blog Carolina Iribarren interviews Julien Stout about his new book, "L’auteur retrouvé," which challenges established assumptions about vernacular authorship in medieval French literature but also invites us to reconsider narratives of modernity, subjectivity, and individualism.

Part II of this interview about Federico Marcon’s new book covers its relation to the recent “Fascism Debate," debts to Frankfurt School critical theory and other forms of historical semantics, impact on the conceptual historian's craft, and more. @joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

Today on the blog, Jon Catlin interviews Federico Marcon on his latest book, "Fascism: History of a Word," which uses semiotics to chart fascism’s changing political and heuristic meanings from its invention in Italy in 1919 to the present. @joncatlin.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

In the JHI Blog's forum on political economy, Veronica Lazăr argues that the turn to global intellectual history has failed to take account of the financial and symbolic economy of contemporary knowledge production. www.jhiblog.org/2025/11/24/t...

Today on the blog, Amartyajyoti Basu writes on the exploitation of transport workers in colonial Calcutta, demonstrating that Indian capitalism has operated through two temporal regimes: abstract, homogeneous clock-time and concrete, task-oriented time rooted in agrarian and communal rhythms.

For the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Ibanca Anand recounts how midcentury US growth economists' influential models of "multi-factor productivity" in agriculture systematically occluded the role of labor and supported narrow, warped criteria of economic health.

In today's think piece, Levi Thompson analyzes an under-explored shift from petro-modernity to petro-post-modernity through Fredric Jameson's theory of culture and film.

In a new think piece for the JHI Forum on political economy, Alexander Curtis intervenes into today's debates around neoliberalism, arguing for the role of "irrational subjecthood" in the context of Margaret Thatcher's economic policies during the 1980s. @alexandercurtis.bsky.social

In today's think-piece, Julia Meghan Walton examines British-Chinese writer Winnifred Eaton, situating her life and career more broadly through concepts of "passing" and "civilizational equivalence."

In a new think-piece for the JHI forum on political economy, Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido discusses the thought of 18th-century Catholic friar Joaquín de Finestrad as an attempt to reconcile sacred morality with materialist-oriented discourses of imperial economics and monarchism in South America.

The October issue of the journal includes an article by Ian Merkel: "Laurette Séjourné and Leonora Carrington, Ethnography and Surrealism in Mexico." Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

On today’s episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Sophia Rosenfeld on her new book, “The Age of Choice," which explores how the idea of choice became related to what it meant to be free between the early modern period and the 20th century. @princetonupress.bsky.social

The recent issue of the journal includes an article by Wojciech Engelking: "Schmitt's Reinterpretation of Hegel During His Nazi Period." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In this new think piece for the JHI Blog Forum on Political Economy, Vishal Verma studies the historical linkages between labor and caste through the intellectual debates underpinning the origins and evolution of the theorization of caste across time and space. web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2025...

The recent issue of the journal includes an article by Hugo Bonin: "'True Liberal Democracy . . . Belongs to Napoléon III': The Rise and Fall of Démocratie Libérale in the French Second Empire" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Today on the blog, Sam Franz and Véronique Mickisch interview Edward Baring about his forthcoming book, "Vulgar Marxism," which studies how projects for worker education shaped 20th-c. Marxist thought. @uchicagopress.bsky.social @samfranz.bsky.social

The new issue of the JHI includes an article by Craig Martin: "Averroes Among the Paduan Physicians, 1540 to 1600": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Miranda Johnson contributes to the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy with a think piece about how the mythos surrounding New Zealand’s "biculturalism" obscures older indigenous strategies of economic development and centuries-long relations between settlers and indigenous peoples.

The winner of the JHI’s 2024 Morris D. Forkosch Book Prize for the best first book in intellectual history is Priyasha Mukhopadhyay for Required Reading: The Life of Everyday Texts in the British Empire! @princetonupress.bsky.social

For the JHI Blog, Rose Facchini interviewed Gisèle Sapiro about her latest book, "Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur mondial? Le champ littéraire transnational" (Seuil, 2024), which studies the role of intermediaries, translators, and mediators in the making of world authorship. @rosefacchini.bsky.social

In the new issue of the JHI, Daniel Sutton explores how ancient Greek theorists struggled to find the terminology to distinguish good and bad forms of popular government: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In a new think piece for the JHI forum on Political Economy, Alexandre Aloy interrogates the concept and historical genealogy of neoliberalism by situating it alongside transnational narratives of authoritarianism.

The new issue of the JHI includes a discussion of the lexicon project, “The Twentieth Century in Basic Concepts: A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany,” by Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, and Falko Schmieder. Access is free for the next few weeks on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

Today on the blog, Jacob Saliba interviews Brandon Bloch on his recent book, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy." @harvardpress.bsky.social

Nayeli L. Riano's article in the new JHI, "The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings of Andrés Bello and Francisco Bilbao," is now available for free. Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In a new think piece for the JHI Forum on Political Economy, Oscar Hughff-Coates discusses Chicago School economist Thomas Sowell and how his work contributed to key discourses on race, post-war economics, and the state in the wake of the neoliberal order.

The JHI's Graduate Student Symposium, "Between the Text and Material History," will be held this Saturday, October 4, on Zoom! Events kick off at 10:00 am Eastern. Check out the complete schedule and register here:

Today on the blog, Jon Catlin interviews Kathryn Brackney on her latest, award-winning book, "Surreal Geographies: A New History of Holocaust Consciousness" @joncatlin.bsky.social @uwiscpress.bsky.social

A new issue of the journal is now available, with articles by Daniel Sutton, Craig Martin, Nayeli L. Riano, Hugo Bonin, Wojciech Engelking, Ian Merkel, and Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, and Falko Schmieder. Have a look, here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55549 @pennpress.bsky.social

In a new think piece for the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Marek Maj discusses how, before the Soviet Union's détente with the West, Polish scientists attempted to render intellectual labor more efficient by adapting and revising the Western managerial turn to motivation.

Today’s think piece explores how life insurance—often seen as a dry, technical instrument—became a surprising site for negotiating modernity in the colonial world.

Are you dying to know if Hegel hated ersatz coffee? Then boy do I have the piece for you. Very happy to be part of the JHI blog forum on political economy in intellectual history!

As part of the JHI Blog forum on political economy, Marie Louise Krogh examines Hegel's rare reflections on the 19th century international coffee industry as an entry point into the theoretical stakes of political economy in the midst of European imperialism.

Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido interviews Beverley Best about her book, The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Value in Marx's Capital (Verso, 2024), which dissects the third volume of Marx's Capital to reveal capital's means of appearance. web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2025...

Officially marking the first of many pieces in the Blog's forum "The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History," Mikkel Flohr offers a novel reading of Marx's historical materialism for a "political economy of ideas." @mflohr.bsky.social

On today's episode of In Theory, the JHI Blog podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quentin Skinner on his new book, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal." @universitypress.cambridge.org

Registration is now open for the JHI Graduate Student Symposium, to be held on Saturday, October 4 via Zoom. Peruse the program and register to attend:

For the blog, Lilia Endter interviews Mikko Immanen about his most recent book, Adorno's Gamble ( @cornellupress.bsky.social ), which reconstructs and analyzes Adorno's integration and overcoming of the ideas of Weimar-era “conservative revolutionaries” like Klages and Spengler.

In the journal, Victoria Smolkin and Daniel Peris examine how the interactions between two secularist organizations shaped the meaning, direction, and fate, of secularism in interwar Europe. Read the article here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...

In today’s think piece, Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa analyzes how historian Sylvia Murr’s discovery of plagiarism in “the most celebrated work of nineteenth-century Indology” led her to develop an approach to historical discourse that challenges received genealogies of the ‘global’ turn.

Rolf Strøm-Olsen explores how patterns of musical consumption were shaped by the authority of music-critical journalism in "Applied Aesthetics and the Musical Public on the Threshold of Romanticism." Read it here in the latest issue of the JHI: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic... @rstromolsen.bsky.social

Alyssa Battistoni discusses her book, Free Gifts, a value-theoretical study of capitalism's appropriation of nature, with Jochen Schmon. They cover the "new materialism," reproductive labor, existentialism, and activism. @alybatt.bsky.social, @jochenschmon.bsky.social, @princetonupress.bsky.social

The JHI newsletter is full of announcements and updates about the journal and blog. Have a quick scroll through the latest here, and subscribe to receive these quarterly newsletters via email: mailchi.mp/115a72d9d762...