The History of Ideas in articles, religion through history, intellectual history, philosophy articles. Selected online articles and podcasts.
African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom
Review of Sylvester A. Johnson, African American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom.
Shari L. Rabin, H-Net Reviews 2017
Fairy Tales or Medieval Reality? Historical origins of fantasy stories
Description
Gemma Hollman, Just History 2016
America’s Second Great Awakening – Podcast
Part I of a special three part series exploring America’s Second Great Awakening. In this episode Sarah, Marissa and Katie introduce the Second Great Awakening, and talk about some of the major movements of the period, including Joseph Smith and the Mormons.
Marissa Rhodes, DG 2016
American Enlightenments – Podcast
In many ways, the Enlightenment gave birth to the United States. Enlightened ideas informed protests over imperial governance and taxation and over whether there should be an American bishop.
Caroline Winterer, Ben Franklin’s World, Episode 127
Aristotle, Father of Scientific Racism
In the past few years, an obsession over the intersection of race and science – and in particular, the use of science to shore up theories of racial hierarchies – has seen a resurgence. At the heart of this revival: Charles Murray, co-author of the notorious 1994 book on innate intelligence and public policy, “The Bell Curve.†These are very old and very bad ideas that have led to unspeakable oppression, particularly of black Americans.
Matthew A. Sears, Washington Post 2018
The Catholic church in America: Earthly concerns
The Catholic church is as big as any company in America. Bankruptcy cases have shed some light on its finances and their mismanagement
The Economist 2012
Historians of Christian Nationalism see disturbing parallels to today’s tax cut battle
The legacy of Christian libertarianism
Jack Jenkins, Think Progress 2017
Atheism in America
Section headings are: The Origins of Americans’ Attitude toward Atheism, Deism Arrives in America, The Golden Age of Unbelief in America, Atheism in the Twentieth Century, Belief and Unbelief in Post-World War II America, The New Atheism
Staff, Encyclopedia of American Studies
Becoming Atheist: Humanism and the Secular West
Naturalistic and atheistic worldviews have a long history in Western philosophy, but there was no identifiable culture of atheism within Europe until the 18th century. the subsequent development of an ethos of disbelief was confined for many years to the intellectual and literary classes…
Dr Russell Blackford, Reviews in History
Bertrand Russell & Buckminster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More
Along with Marx, various others have raised significant objections to Protestant, capitalist definitions of work. Bertrand Russell and Buckminster Fuller are among those in the 20th century.
Open Culture 2015
Chicago Renaissance; Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis – Podcast
Jon talks with Liesl Olson about her new book published by Yale University Press, titled “Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis” (2017). Olson is the Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry library and has taught at the University of Chicago.
Liesl Olson, Midwestern History Association 2017
Clear and Present Dangers
Review of American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, by Kevin Phillips
Alan Brinkley, NY Times Sunday Book Review 2006
Creating Circumstances: Edward Bernays, Psychoanalysis, and the Making of American Consumer Culture
The author briefly sums up research he had been doing on Edward Bernays, who was a public relations man early in the 20th century who had been associated with Freudianism.
Joseph Malherek, Perspectives on History 2017
A Critical History Asks, What Does It Mean to Be Modern?
Review of MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois From Machiavelli to Bellow By Steven B. Smith
James Miller, NY Times Book Review 2016
Decolonising the Mind: The Misunderstanding of Traditional African Beliefs
There are few religions as globally misunderstood as African traditional religions. Whether it is being wrongly labelled voodoo, juju or witchcraft, indigenous African faith systems tend to be associated with darkness, animal and human sacrifices, violence and general backwardness
Cosmic Yoruba, 2014
Did the United States Invent Teenagers?
The United States did invent teenagers. They became a common commodity, sharing a profoundly influencing uniform experience for them and the nation: they attended high school. By the middle of the 1920s, high school experience had become relatively homogenized across the nation…
James Cortada, Oxford Univ. Press blog 2016
Disappearing Religions of the Middle East – Podcast
Gerard Russell is the author of Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
Gerard Russell, History Today 2014
Eating for Others: The Nineteenth-Century Vegetarian Movement in Germany
Carolyn Taratko, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog 2016
The Evangelicals
Frances Fitzgerald talked about her book ‘The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America’, in which she provides a history of evangelicalism in the United States.
C-Span Video 2017
Pew Research: To understand the political power of evangelicals, we must look beyond the pulpits.
Review of ‘The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America’, by Frances Fitzgerald
Jeff Sharlet, The New Republic 2017
‘European culture’ is an Invented Tradition
The idea of a coherent European culture is actually quite new. Scattered uses of the phrase appeared in the 19th century, but it was only in the 1920s and ’30s that the idea came of age…
Benjamin G Martin, Aeon
A History of U.S. Foreign Affairs in Which Grandiose Ambitions Trump Realism
Review of THE TRAGEDY OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY; How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest By Walter A. McDougall
David E. Sanger, NY Times 2016
How an Economic Theory Helped Mire the US in Vietnam
A little-remembered aspect of the Vietnam War debacle is the important role played by a prominent economic historian named Walt Whitman Rostow, whose theories on economic development helped persuade Americans – and two presidents – that the fight in Vietnam was right and that we must prevail.
Peter Hilsenrath, The Conversation 2017
How Cold War Philosophy Permeates US Society to this Day
When Cold War philosophy tied rational choice theory to scientific method, it embedded the free-market mindset in US society.
John McCumber, Aeon
Intellectual History and Global Transformations
During the final weekend of October, eighteen graduate students from a variety of history and literature departments gathered at UC Berkeley for the “Futures of Intellectual History” graduate conference to workshop dissertation chapters and to think more deeply about the sub-discipline of intellectual history, its future, its methodology, and its relevance in an age of global history.
Timothy Wright, Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas 2017
Liberty – Podcast
Bettany Hughes examines changing ideas of liberty by allowing a neuroscientist to take control of her brain and by perusing the pornography of the French Revolution.
Bettany Hughes,The Ideas That Make Us, Series 2, BBC4
Martin Luther and the German Reformation
A comprehensive account of the man who split western Christendom for good.
Bridget Heal, History Today 2017
Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned Dixie Republican
Thirty years ago there were a few Republican Congressmen and Senators from Southern states, but state and local politics in the South was still dominated by Democrats. By 2014 that had changed entirely as the last of the Deep South states completed their transition from single-party Democratic rule to single party rule under Republicans. The flight of the Dixiecrats was complete.
Chris Ladd, Forbes 2017
Social Darwinism – Podcast
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism. After the publication of Charles Darwin’s masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859, some thinkers argued that Darwin’s ideas about evolution could also be applied to human society.
In our Time, BBC Radio 4 2014
Sovereignty
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea of Sovereignty, the authority of a state to govern itself and the relationship between the sovereign and the people.
In our Time, BBC Radio 4 2016
The Friendly Recluse
Hermits, anchorites and anchoresses (men or women who lived enclosed in a small cell in a church) were holy figures with looser ties to ecclesiastical authorities and more autonomy than those who lived in formal religious communities…
Sophia L. Deboick , History Today 2017
The History of Human Emotions – Video
The words we use to describe our emotions affect how we feel, says historian Tiffany Watt Smith, and they’ve often changed (sometimes very dramatically) in response to new cultural expectations and ideas. Take nostalgia, for instance…
Tiffany Watt Smith, TED Talks 2017
Towards an Intellectual History of the Alt-Right?
Description
Yitzchak Schwartz, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog 2017
There is no such thing as western civilisation
The values of liberty, tolerance and rational inquiry are not the birthright of a single culture. In fact, the very notion of something called ‘western culture’ is a modern invention
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Guardian 2016
What the idea of Civilisational ‘Collapse’ Says about History
The idea that the Maya or Easter Islanders experienced an apocalyptic end makes for good television but bad archaeology
Guy D Middleton, Aeon
When did Amish Become Old-Fashioned?
Although Anabaptists around the world are incredibly diverse, ranging like many faith communities from ultraconservative to liberal-radical, popular stereotypes have long presented members as agrarian anti-modernists.
Ben Goossen, JHI Blog
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