Journal of the History of Ideas

Jochen Schmon interviewed Jensen Suther about his book, True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom (Stanford University Press, 2025) and ongoing research.

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In an essay for the blog, Nicolás Ignacio Rojas writes that the status of semi-autonomous “vassals,” which was accorded by Spain to Chile's Indigenous Mapuche in 18th- and 19th-century treaties, challenges received dichotomies between sovereignty and subjugation.

Negotiated Vassalage on the Chilean Frontier by Nicolás Ignacio Rojas

For the blog, Rose Facchini interviewed Roger Chartier about his book Won in Translation: Textual Mobility in Early Modern Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), which traces the travels of early-modern texts across linguistic and cultural borders, and his current research.

Elusive Movements of the Printed Word: An Interview with Roger Chartier by Rose Facchini

The latest issue of the journal includes an article by Hannah Anderson: "The Useful Caribbean: Settlers’ Botany and Plantation Cultures," available to read here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/989310

There are twelve days left to submit a proposal to the JHI’s fall graduate symposium. You can find the call and recommended reading here: https://www.jhiblog.org/2026/05/07/jhi-graduate-student-symposium-2026-prophecy-prediction-and-the-politics-of-futurity-call-for-proposals/

The latest issue of the journal includes an article by Matti Leprêtre: "Paracelsus’s Doctrine of Signatures Reconsidered." Read it here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/989479

In an essay for the blog, Chris O'Kane presents the latest edition of Marx’s Capital as yet another attempt by translators to crystallize a particular political interpretation of Marx—this time, the novel synthesis misapprehended as a straightforward “Marx revival.”

Towards a Critical Materialist Analysis of Capital’s Translations by Chris O'Kane

Paola Zichi's article "Race, Redemption, and Reform: The Interplay of Eugenics, Antisemitism, and Feminist Anti Trafficking Efforts in Early Twentieth-Century Italy" is the final piece in the JHI's cluster of articles on "Race: Histories of an Idea." Read it here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/989316

In this JHI Blog interview, Leslie James discusses her latest book, “The Moving Word: How the West African and Caribbean Press Shaped Black Political Thought, 1935–1960” (2025), and how it reframes the relationship between newspapers and decolonization in Anglophone West Africa and the Caribbean.

Moving Words, Shifting Visions: An Interview with Leslie James by Tomi Onabanjo

The new issue of the JHI includes a cluster of articles on "Race: Histories of Idea." Shruti Balaji's contribution is "'The African Problem Is a World Problem': (Dis)locating Race in Late Colonial Indian Intellectual Thought." Read it here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/article/989315