You are not authenticated through an institution. Should you have institutional access?
Here's how to get it
Series
History of Intellectual Culture
International Yearbook of Knowledge and Society
-
Edited by:
Charlotte A. Lerg
Charlotte A. LergSearch for this author in:
eISSN:
2747-677
ISSN:
2747-6766
History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) isn international and interdisciplinary open access yearbook for peer-reviewed papers, published by De Gruyter. It is the succession of the journal of the same name, founded in 1999 by Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis at the University of Calgary, Canada. A pioneering part of open access digital publishing among history journals, it was one of the first publications to focus on the cultural dimension in the history of knowledge and ideas.
Building on this heritage, the yearbook continues to emphasize cultural dimensions of the history of knowledge and underscores that knowledge must be regarded as a fundamental category in society. In doing so, ideas, concepts, ideologies, theories, and cognitive practices are located within their social and material contexts. To understand the theory, production, practices, and circulation of knowledge, we relate intellectual traditions, discourses, lived experiences, and identities to resources, social conditions, and power structures as well as to organisations, infrastructures, and media systems. In short, we conceptualize knowledge as politically, socially, culturally, and economically formed.
Understanding knowledge as a historical phenomenon, HIC focuses on the modern period (from the long 19th century onward). In addition, to strike a balance between the geographical parameters of global region(alism)s and the fluid nature of cultural and epistemic construction, the yearbook takes on a decidedly transatlantic and/or continental view of Europe and ‘America’ (including Canada, the U.S., and Latin America). Thus, we connect various historiographical and scholarly traditions, including German-speaking Wissensgeschichte and a more international "history of knowledge".
In combining the terms ‘intellectual’ and ‘culture’ we consciously engage with and aim to dissolve what has long been perceived as a tension between an often elite-focused history of ideas and a more broadly-based cultural and social history. This combination holds great potential to also open the yearbook up towards other related approaches at the intersection of knowledge and society, such as the history of mentalities and milieus, the history of memory and media, the materiality of knowledge formation, and the genealogies of ideologies. We understand knowledge as circulating beyond academia and as potentially changing, evolving or even disappearing. We invite contributors and readers to consider the way knowledge and culture are both at once sedimentary and yet constantly fluid. This is a confluence that is far from coincidental but, in fact, reminds us that knowledge and culture are closely and dynamically entwined and need to be studied in conjunction.
In HIC we welcome contributions that engage with the history of knowledge from a cultural perspective that include but are not limited to the following themes:
- institutions, systems, and infrastructures
- circulation (e.g. geographical, biographical, temporal)
- media and materiality
- practices, performances, formations, and formats
- structures, agency, and power relations
- resources and socials conditions
- identity, memory, and community
Guided by these conceptual and methodological considerations, HIC provides a forum for publication of original research and the promotion of rigorous and critical discussion. We particularly invite new voices and early career researchers. Grounded in history we distinctly encourage interdisciplinary approaches with the aim of stimulating productive exchanges, expanding conventional notions, and enriching public discourse.
Editors-in-Chief (2021– ):
Charlotte A. Lerg, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich
Johan Östling, Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK), Lund University
Jana Weiß, The University of Texas at Austin
Founding Editors-in-Chief (1999–2020):
E. Lisa Panayotidis († 2016), University of Calgary
Paul Stortz, University of Calgary
Advisory Board (2021– ):
Peter Burke, University of Cambridge
Tristan Coignard, Université Bordeaux Montaigne
Heather Ellis, University of Sheffield
Tiffany N. Florvil, University of New Mexico
Adam Kola, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University
Pierre-Héli Monot, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich
Herman Paul, Leiden University
João Ohara, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
Swen Steinberg, Queen’s University, Kingston, and German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
Emily Steinhauer, Royal Holloway, University of London
Eugenia Roldán Vera, Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV), Mexico
Christa Wirth, University of Agder
Testimonials
“Thank you again for your help preparing the article, it's been a real pleasure working with everyone from HIC and I look forward to the next stage.” (Emily Steinhauer, German Historical Institute London)
“As a PhD student submitting to your edited volume, it was really a great experience, and I learned a lot from the support and feedback your editorial team and the reviewers provided me.” (Chelsea Rodriguez, University of Groningen)
“I do appreciate the time and effort you and your co-editor have invested in helping me improve the article, especially given this is my first single-authored paper! I am thankful for your patience.” (anonymized)
“Thanks for all your feedback and guidance.” (Sakina Shakil Gröppmaier, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
“[...] may I warmly thank you for your effective and quick feedback. It was such a great pleasure to read and work with it, and it gave me tons of pleasure and, positively speaking, fun, to debate with it.” (Anastassiya Schacht, Universität Wien)
Supplementary Materials
Topics
Book
Open Access
Volume 4 in this series
The fourth issue of the yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) features a thematic section on the production of knowledge related to the Holocaust. The contributions focus on the circulation of knowledge via letters and other forms of written communication within and among survivor historical commissions after the Second World War with an emphasis on the interplay of gender and other differences. Although more women than men were involved in these efforts, women typically held subordinate roles to men and have largely been invisible in the historiography of these endeavors. This thematic section addresses this lacuna by exploring aspects of the “unseen labor” behind these documentation efforts that remain underexplored and marginalized in studies on the production, circulation, and history of knowledge, as well as of intellectual culture.
Book
Open Access
Volume 3 in this series
The third issue of the yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) devotes a thematic section to experimental spaces for knowledge production. The articles in this section investigate the role of experimental environments as sites for knowledge production during the long nineteenth century, thereby extending the scope beyond the confines of traditional academic institutions such as academies, laboratories, and universities. By focusing on intentional communities, colonial gardens, agricultural colonies, and artistic colonies as experimental spaces, the authors investigate the intertwined social, natural, and aesthetic aspects of environments. An overarching aim is to develop a distinct perspective rooted in the history of knowledge, wherein experiments are conceptualized both as a category employed by the historical actors and as a methodological concept.
In addition, the third issue comprises several individual papers covering a wide range of topics, stretching from the U.S. patent system in the 1930s and anti-intellectualism in interwar Britain to the cultural translation of knowledge in the wake of the Holocaust and the circulation of economic knowledge in postwar Sweden. The issue also contains several theoretical, historiographical, and methodological interventions and reflections, including a conversation on decolonizing knowledge in academia and beyond.
Book
Open Access
Volume 2 in this series
The second issue of the yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) dedicates a thematic section to modes of publication. This volume addresses recent advances in publication studies and stresses the cultural formation of knowledge. By exploring and analyzing layers of presenting, sharing, and circulating knowledge, we invite readers to critically engage with questions of media uses and publishing practices and structures, both historically and in our contemporary digital age.
The articles in this volume attest to the great variety of publication modes and perspectives, from the potential and limits of digitizing newspapers such as the New York Times to questions of positionality in building and using Wikipedia, from translation policies and female participation to the genre of university histories.
Book
Open Access
Volume 1 in this series
With concepts of participation discussed in multiple disciplines from media studies to anthropology, from political sciences to sociology, the first issue of the new yearbook History of Intellectual Culture (HIC) dedicates a thematic section to the way knowledge can and arguably must be conceptualized as "participatory".
Introducing and exploring "participatory knowledge", the volume aims to draw attention to the potential of looking at knowledge formation and circulation through a new lens and to open a dialogue about how and what concepts and theories of participation can contribute to the history of knowledge. By asking who gets to participate in defining what counts as knowledge and in deciding whose knowledge is circulated, modes of participation enter into the examination of knowledge on various levels and within multiple cultural contexts.
The articles in this volume attest to the great variety of approaches, contexts, and interpretations of "participatory knowledge", from the sociological projects of the Frankfurt School to the Uppsala-based Institute for Race Biology, from the Argentinian National Folklore Survey to current hashtag activism and Covid-19-archive projects. HIC sees knowledge as rooted in social and political structures, determined by modes of transfer and produced in collaborative processes. The notion of "participatory knowledge" highlights in a compelling way how knowledge is rooted in cultural practices and social configurations.
