We put together what I think is a great reading list on histories of the future, but we will keep updating it until the fall, so please send me any suggestions, especially if you’re familiar with a region that isn’t yet well-represented here.

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The primary editors of the JHI Blog have prepared an extensive bibliography on "Prophecy, Prediction, and the Politics of Futurity," the theme of the upcoming JHI Graduate Symposium (see our open call for proposals).

Please share this with fellow graduate students! We have been hard at work on a bibliography on this theme, too, which we'll publish in a couple of weeks.

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Our annual JHI Graduate Symposium will be held virtually on October 17. The theme is "Prophecy, Prediction, and the Politics of Futurity.” Members of the journal’s editorial board will offer constructive feedback on students’ papers. Proposals are due June 22.

I wrote this, please read! (As usual when I have a thing come out I'm acutely aware of its limits but fwiw I'm excited this is out. I learned a lot writing it. Also: JHI blog editors were incredibly rigorous and vigorous, made the piece better as object and the process of writing it more edifying!)

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · 7mo ago

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.

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 Intellectual History of Worker Education: An Interview with Edward Baring

by Sam Franz and Véronique Mickisch

web.sas.upenn.edu

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

Literature’s Circulation Across Fields and Nations: An Interview with Gisèle Sapiro

by Rose Facchini

web.sas.upenn.edu

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.

The Brain as Economy: Intellectual Labor and Mental Efficiency in Twentieth-Century Poland

by Marek Maj This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”

jhiblog.org

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...

Capital’s Singular Dynamic: An Interview with Beverley Best

by Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido

web.sas.upenn.edu

Brief reflection on materialist and Marxist approaches to the history of science in the latest HSS Newsletter, co-authored with @bolman.bsky.social & Claire Votava cdn.ymaws.com/hssonline.or...

A brief reflection on digital tools for the humanities, published by Clio and the Contemporary: clioandthecontemporary.com/2025/05/23/d...

Digital Tools for the Humanities

Machines reconfigure work. And yet, historians or other humanistic researchers rarely think about the way that our digital workflows—the tools that we use to do our work—enable or disenable the kinds…

clioandthecontemporary.com

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 Production of Nature: An Interview with Alyssa Battistoni

by Jochen Schmon

jhiblog.org

Rose Facchini (@rosefacchini.bsky.social) interviewed Anna Ferrando about the practice of literary agency in Italy before and during World War II, a history that explains the peculiar fact that Fascist Italy ranked among the greatest consumers of foreign literature.

How Literary Agents Made Italian Publishing Transnational: An Interview with Anna Ferrando

by Rose Facchini

jhiblog.org

an honor to be interviewed by Robin Manley for @jhideas.bsky.social - come for the spicy takes on critical AI and media history, stay for the stuff on Saussure and dialectics

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · last yr.

Leif Weatherby (@leifw.bsky.social‬) discusses his new book, Language Machines, with Robin Manley (@robinmanley.bsky.social‬). The interview covers similarities between structuralism and Large Language Models, Saussure's relationship to Marxism, and theories versus histories of the present.

It was an absolute pleasure to chat to @rosefacchini.bsky.social for @jhideas.bsky.social about my book Translation Multiples, which is now officially out (@princetonupress.bsky.social)! I love the cover image and the title for this interview: "Translation in Different Keys". Thank you, Rose & Zach!

Journal of the History of Ideas@jhideas.bsky.social · last yr.

What's the problem with declarations of a new translation's "authoritative" status? In an interview on her new book, Translation Multiples, Kasia Szymanska (@kaszyma.bsky.social) discusses the idiosyncrasies and possibilities of the practice of translation. @princetonupress.bsky.social

JHI Blog welcomes submissions for a forum on the relationship between new work in intellectual history and political economy. Submit a proposal by May 15. Read the call here:

Call for Submissions, JHI Blog Forum: “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”

Inspired by a panel at the 2025 American Historical Association annual conference, this JHI Blog Forum will collect and publish short reflections on the relationship between new work in intellectual h...

jhiblog.org

Daniel Judt discusses with Jonathan Levy, author of the recently published "The Real Economy" (@princetonupress.bsky.social), what we can gain from studying the issues that occupied the less epistemologically constrained economic theories of the early twentieth century.

Storage, Investment, and Desire: An Interview with Jonathan Levy

by Daniel Judt

web.sas.upenn.edu

Engaging with several previously untranslated texts, Benjamin Noys and Alberto Toscano, editors of Bataille's Critical Essays (@uchicagopress.bsky.social), discussed the historical reception and contemporary relevance of Bataille's work with Jared Bly.

The Other Bataille: An Interview with Benjamin Noys and Alberto Toscano

by Jared Bly

web.sas.upenn.edu