Imaginary Iconoclasms in Early Modern Haarlem

by Madeline McMahon Isaak van Nickelen (or van Nickele) (c.1633 – 1703) painted multiple church interiors of the St. Bavo Kerk in Haarlem. Yet the Bavokerk in this painting—Fitzwilliam Museum 82— does not appear as it did in 1668, when… Continue Reading →

Science, Mysticism, and Dreams in Alice᾽s Adventures in Wonderland

by guest contributor Stephanie L. Schatz There can be something naïvely reductive and crassly materialistic about empirical analysis—especially if it relates to phenomena also commonly described as mystical, supernatural, transcendental, or sublime. Like the experimenters in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle… Continue Reading →

March 16, 2015 0

What We’re Reading: Week of March 9

Here are a few interesting articles and pieces we found around the web this week. If you come across something that other intellectual historians might enjoy, please let us know in the comment section. Maddy: Kirill Gerstein, “The Real Tchaikovsky”… Continue Reading →

March 14, 2015 0

Finding Feelings in Intellectual History

by guest contributor Michael Duffy One of the consequences of advances in historical writing and theorization, at least in my neck of the woods, has been that we write about institutions as if feelings did not exist in them. Cambridge,… Continue Reading →

March 13, 2015 0

“Jules Verne would roll over in his grave,” or Döblin on the Future

by guest contributor Carolyn Taratko Migrants streaming into Europe’s cities, postcolonial conflicts brought home, Greenland’s melting ice sheet, scientists emancipated from nature’s constraints through the use of genetic engineering; these sound like today’s headlines, but in fact they come from… Continue Reading →

March 11, 2015 0

Approaching Religious Belief and Practice in Modern Intellectual History

by Emily Rutherford Two weeks ago, I attended a concert of seventeenth-century German music. The theme was the liturgical season of Lent, with a number of pieces meditating somberly on death. They meant Jesus’s crucifixion, of course, but I found… Continue Reading →

March 9, 2015 0

What we’re reading: Week of March 1st

Here are a few interesting articles and pieces we found around the web this week. Please also note the newest issue of the Journal of the History of Ideas , and take a peek at the table of contents! If… Continue Reading →

March 7, 2015 0

The Women of Négritude

by guest contributor Sarah Dunstan With the publication of his famous Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (English trans.) in 1937, Aimé Césaire introduced the word Négritude into the French lexicon. In so doing, he named the black literary and… Continue Reading →

March 6, 2015 0

The French Reformer and the Church of England: The Limits of Early Modern Ecumenism

by Madeline McMahon Pierre Du Moulin (1568 – 1658) was, paradoxically, an irenic and ecumenical controversialist. As a prominent minister in the French reformed church, Du Moulin wrote almost one hundred polemical pamphlets and books against Protestants and Catholics alike… Continue Reading →

March 4, 2015 0

An Open Letter Across Time

by John Raimo Thomas Mann received a curious letter on December 25, 1936. The Nobel Prize-winning author had entered into exile in Switzerland after publicly denouncing the Nazi regime years earlier. Mann’s works had been already banned as “un-German,” despite… Continue Reading →

March 2, 2015 4

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