JHIdeas Podcast

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Asheesh Kapur Siddique, assistant professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, about his recent book, "The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World" (Yale University Press, 2024).  Siddique examines how early modern British administrators ushered in a new kind of information state and draws together how successive early modern rulers in Britain transformed the collection, preservation, and use of information as they expanded their influence and rule over South Asia and the Americas. Through an analysis of the forms of knowledge encountered by British travelers and administrators and powerful ideas about the role of information in the governance of native populations and Europeans alike, Siddique offers a new history of how mastery over territory, peoples, and information came to be seen as related endeavors.

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, Oxford about her new book, "Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War" (Basic Books, 2025), also available in German as "Für die Freiheit: Der Bauernkrieg 1525" (trans. Holger Fock and Sabine Müller, S. Fischer Verlage, 2024). In this new history of this massive event, Roper closely examines the political, religious, and intellectual worlds of the thousands of peasants who rose up and took over vast lands in what is now Germany, in one of the most decisive moments in the history of the Reformation, and (as we discuss) for the intellectual history of everything from revolution to ecology to brotherhood. By reading the peasants' movements, physical landscape, complaints, dreams, desires, and visions for the future, Roper offers us an account of how, for a few months in the middle of the sixteenth century, the poorest people in Germany almost overturned the social order of their world.

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Marc-William Palen, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, about his new book, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (Princeton University Press, 2024).  Palen begins his story in the 1840s, and shows how over a century of left-wing activists, politicians, and scholars imagined ways to transform the world through free-trade economics. People with distinct and overlapping politics populate this world, including anti-colonial nationalists, liberals, socialists, Christians, and feminists. Through an analysis of the evolving discussions of the meaning of free trade and protectionism for war and peace across British, US, French, Dutch, Japanese, and other empires, Palen traces the 19th century left-wing origins of free-trade economics and the contest with its right-wing counterparts to the establishment of the post-1945 economic order.

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Robert Darnton, Professor Emeritus and University Librarian Emeritus at Harvard University, about his recent book, The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748-1789 (W. W. Norton, 2024), also published in French translation: L'humeur révolutionnaire: Paris, 1748-1789 (trans. Hélène Borraz, Gallimard, 2024).  Darnton traces how the antecedents to revolution circulated among the Parisian public in the decades before the storming of the Bastille, through their everyday oppositions to the rising price of bread, the overreaches of the monarchy, and the policing of poor neighborhoods. Through their growing sense that the powerful in their society were not governing as they should, ordinary people in Paris began to acquire a shared feeling of discontent, and showed this through many forms of public performance and protest. Darnton tracks this as the development of a "revolutionary temper" in Paris, one which made the population ready to change their world in a matter of decades.

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Umut Özsu, Professor in the Department of Law and Legalities at Carleton University, about his book Completing Humanity: The International Law of Decolonization, 1960-82 (Cambridge University Press, 2023). The book shows how jurists from the Third World transformed international law during post-1945 decolonization, and traces the legal dimensions of ideas of territorial sovereignty, resource extraction, justice, and freedom.

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Camille Robcis, Professor of History and French at Columbia University about her recent book Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France (University of Chicago Press, 2021). Robcis traces how the Catalan psychiatrist François Tosquelles, together with his colleagues and patients in the village of St-Alban-sur-Limagnole, transformed the practice and theory of psychiatry during and after the Second World War. They did this by turning towards the institution of the hospital itself, and considering how psychiatric care could be rooted in an ethical and political critique of social conditions. This resulted in a new movement called institutional psychotherapy, which Robcis traces between Spain, France, and Algeria, and in the work and legacies of influential thinkers such as Jean Oury, Frantz Fanon, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.

Luke Wilkinson interviews Henrike Lähnemann, Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at the University of Oxford, to discuss her and Eva Schlotheuber's new book 'The Life of Nuns: Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents' (Open Book Publishers, 2024). They discuss the ideas that circulated through the sounds and spaces of medieval German convents.

Disha Karnad Jani interviews Marlene Daut, Professor of French and African Diaspora Studies at Yale University, about her new book "Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution" (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). Daut draws out the influential concepts transformed by 18th and 19th century Haitian thinkers writing during and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. She shows the simultaneous universality and specificity of the Haitian revolutionary moment for the development of enduring ideas about freedom, indigeneity, revolution, and slavery.

Disha Karnad Jani interviews Tehila Sasson, Assistant Professor of Britain and the World in the Department of History at Emory University. In this interview, the author discusses her new book The Solidarity Economy: Nonprofits and the Making of Neoliberalism after Empire (Princeton University Press, 2024). Sasson shows how British nonprofits sought to create an ethical capitalism in the decades immediately after the Second World War and traces how many of the core concepts and practices of neoliberalism grew out of experiments from the left-liberal nonprofit sector in the era of decolonization.

Historian and In Theory editor Disha Karnad Jani interviews Charisse Burden-Stelly about her new book, Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2023). The book explores how related panics about Black political power and communism in the early 20th century drove the US government's attempts at repression of anti-capitalist and anti-racist movements.

Historian and In Theory editor Disha Karnad Jani interviews Anjali Arondekar, Professor of Feminist Studies at California University of California, Santa Cruz and Founding Director of the Center for South Asian Studies about her recently published book, Abundance: Sexuality's History (Duke University Press, 2023).

In Theory editor Disha Karnad Jani interviews Ian Merkel, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Freie Universität Berlin, about his first book, Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the French Social Sciences (The University of Chicago Press, 2022).

In Theory editor Disha Karnad Jani interviews Divya Cherian, Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University about her book, Merchants of Virtue. Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia (University of California University Press, 2022).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Judith Surkis, Professor of History at Rutgers School of Art and Sciences, about her book, Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930(Cornell University Press, 2019).

In Theory editor Kristin Engelhardt interviews Dannelle Gutarra Cordero, Professor in African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University, about her book, She is Weeping: An Intellectual History of Racialized Slavery and Emotions in the Atlantic World(Cambridge University Press, 2021).

In Theory editor Kristin Engelhardt interviews Professor Edward Tyerman, Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, about his book, Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture (Columbia University Press, 2021).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Charly Coleman, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University and award-winning author of the 2016 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies, about his book, The Spirit of French Capitalism. Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment(Stanford University Press, 2021).

JHI Blog editor Tom Furse interviews Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Yale University about his book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (Verso, 2022).

John Raimo, one of the founding editor of the JHI Blog and PhD candidate at New York University, interviews Christopher S. Celenza, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History in Classics at Johns Hopkins University about his new book, "The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400-1800"(Cambridge University Press, 2021).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Manan Ahmed Asif, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University and co-executive editor of the JHI, about his book, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India (Harvard University Press, 2020).

JHI Blog contributing editor Glauco Schettini interviews Hannah Marcus, Assistant Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University and the winner of the JHI's 2020 Morris D. Forkosch Prize, about her book, Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and Censorship in Early Modern Italy(University of Chicago Press, 2020).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews William H. Sewell Jr., the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago, about his new book, Commercial Capitalism and Civic Equality in Eighteenth-Century France(University of Chicago Press, 2021).

Guest host John Raimo interviews Sebastian Veg, professor of the intellectual history of twentieth-century China at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Science (EHESS) in Paris, about his book, Minjian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals (Columbia University Press 2019, and paperback 2021).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz, research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge and Executive Director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation, about her new book, Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global Intellectual History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912(Columbia University Press, 2020).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Andrew B. Liu, assistant professor of history at Villanova University, about his new book, Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India(Yale University Press, 2020).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Katy Hull, lecturer in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, about her new book, The Machine Has a Soul: American Sympathy with Italian Fascism (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Guest Host Ariel Mond (PhD candidate, Rutgers University – New Brunswick)interviews Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel, assistant professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, about her new book, Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire (University of Illinois Press, 2020).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Elleni Centime Zeleke, assistant professor in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, about her book, Ethiopia In Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016 (Brill, 2019).

JHI Blog editor Luna Sarti interviews Lydia Barnett, Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University, about her book, After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe(Johns Hopkins University Press: 2019). Professor Barnett was awarded the Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best book in intellectual history by the Journal of the History of Ideas in 2019.

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Erika Lorraine Milam, Professor of History at Princeton University, about her book, Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America(Princeton University Press: 2019).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Anthony Grafton, the Henry Putnam Professor of History and the Humanities at Princeton University, about his new book, Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe(Harvard University Press: 2020).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, about his new book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century(Monthly Review Books: 2020).

Peter de Bolla, Ewan Jones, Paul Nulty, Gabriel Recchia, and John Regan, all affiliated with the Cambridge Concept Lab, have coauthored the article "The Idea of Liberty, 1600–1800: A Distributional Concept Analysis," published in the most recent issue (81.3, July 2020) of the Journal of the History of Ideas. Peter De Bolla spoke with Brendan Mackie, a contributing editor at the JHI Blog, about their article.

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Jessica Whyte, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Whales, about her new book, Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism(Verso: 2019).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Vincent Brown, the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, about his new book, Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War(Belknap Press HUP: 2020).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Alexander Zevin, an assistant professor of history at the City University of New York, about his new book, Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist (Verso, 2019).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews K. Healan Gaston, Lecturer in American Religious History and Ethics at Harvard Divinity School, about her new book, Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2019). You can find her article, "Reinscribing Religious Authenticity: Religion, Secularism, and the Perspectival Character of Intellectual History" in Andrew Hartman and Raymond Haberski, Jr., eds., American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times (Cornell University Press, 2018). You can read Udi Greenberg's review, "The Right’s 'Judeo-Christian' Fixation," in The New Republic.

Sarah Pickman, a PhD candidate at Yale University, speaks with Michael Robinson, a professor of history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, about history and podcasting. Robinson started his blog and associated podcast, "Time to Eat the Dogs," in 2008, and has used it as a platform to interview scholars about their work in the history of science and exploration.

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Durba Mitra, Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Carol K. Pforzheimer Assistant Professor at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, about her new book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020).

John Raimo, a founding editor of the JHI Blog and PhD candidate at New York University, interviews Professor Gisèle Sapiro of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. They discuss her new book, "Les écrivains et la politique en France : De l’affaire Dreyfus à la guerre d’Algérie" (Seuil, 2018).

Brendan Mackie, the host of "The Making of a Historian" podcast (https://www.historian.live/), speaks with Professor Joshua Fogel of York University about his book 'A Friend in Deed: Lu Xun, Uchiyama Kanzō, and the Intellectual World of Shanghai on the Eve of War' (Association for Asian Studies, 2019).

In Theory co-host Disha Karnad Jani interviews Christopher Cameron, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, about his new book Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019).

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Nasser Zakariya , Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, about his book A Final Story: Science, Myth, and Beginnings (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

In Theory: With Priyamvada Gopal by JHIdeas

In Theory co-host Simon Brown interviews Professor Carhart about his new book: Leibniz Discovers Asia: Social Networking in the Republic of Letters. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Disha Karna Jani speaks with Professor Emma Kuby about her new work Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight against Concentration Camps after 1945 (Cornell, 2019).

A discussion of Professor Case's 2018 "The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond."

Political Myth in Blumenberg's thought: Dr. Andrew Hines interviews Prof. Angus Nicholls by JHIdeas

Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Prof. Adom Getachew by JHIdeas

Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Eli Cook by JHIdeas

Simon Brown interviews Sophia Rosenfeld by JHIdeas