A New History of the Humanities among “Books of the Year”

The Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) has selected "A New History of the Humanities" as one of the "Books of the Year".  They seem to refer to the new paperback edition of my book which came out in North America in January 2016, so yes, it's really this year.

Click here for more info.

Fellowships in History of Humanities

At the Vossius Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences, several research fellowships in History of Humanities are available. These fellowships are meant to stay up to three months at the University of Amsterdam.

Click here for applying for the Vossius Fund for Research Fellows.

Ukrainian Translation of "De Vergeten Wetenschappen" Selected among Best Books of 2016

The Ukrainian translation of my book "De Vergeten Wetenschappen"  was selected among the best books of 2016 (from more than 500 books) at the Lviv Forum of Publishers. Click here for the broadcasting. 

Fall issue of "History of Humanities" has been published!

The 2016 Fall Issue of "History of Humanities" has just been published:

Click here for the Table of Contents.

The theme is "Going Global":

While the academic conception of the humanities, or Geisteswissenschaften, may be a Western invention, attempts to analyze literature, art, music, language, theater, and history are not exclusively European phenomena but have originated in different parts of the world. For this reason, one of the stated goals of this journal is to advocate the study of the history of the humanities from a global perspective.1 In the first issue we included one aspect of the humanities in China. The current issue includes essays on the humanities in precolonial Mali, pre-Hispanic America, the Ottoman Empire, and the Soviet Union. What do we gain from a global perspective? A transgeographical history of the humanities not only helps avoid a parochial view but also shows to what extent practices and ideals in the humanities in different parts of the world are connected and comparable. In the current issue, Shamil Jeppie argues that the humanities in precolonial Timbuktu can be properly understood only if they are viewed as part of a larger network of learning that included North Africa and the Middle East. Sara Gonzalez asserts that Peruvian history writing focused on images as the basis for historical narratives in which the pre-Columbian rulers were connected to the Habsburg dynasty. Michiel Leezenberg draws attention to the fact that processes of vernacularization took place simultaneously in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the world. Floris Solleveld focuses on Europe but discusses the notion of “revolution” in the humanities across different countries. Boris Gasparov makes us aware that, even in relation to the secluded situation of the Soviet Union, a comparative perspective is rewarding. We wish to further encourage the study of the history of humanities from a pluralistic, comparative point of view. Our argument in favor of a global perspective does not, however, exclude the journal’s other goals. In fact, this issue’s Forum contributions by Herman Paul and colleagues deal with the question of how to write a history of the humanities that transcends disciplines. They hypothesize that scholarly personae offer a promising focus for such a project. By contrasting different disciplines and scholars, they show that a comparative perspective is fruitful not only for a global but also for a primarily local history of the humanities.

Book of Abstracts of "The Making of the Humanities V" is online!

"The Making of the Humanities V" will take place at Johns Hopkins University from 5-7 October 2016. The full book of abstracts in now available.

Click here for the book of abstracts.

Our recent volume "The Making of the Modern Humanities" reviewed in premier History of Science journal (Isis)

"A must-read for anyone interested in the history of a broad range of the humanities. It combines case studies of great historical precision with methodological considerations of historical epistemologies, with the explicit aim of matching the work done in the history of science with equivalent historical epistemologies of the various humanistic disciplines—including philology, musicology, art history, linguistics, archaeology, theater studies, history of philosophy, media studies, Oriental studies, and literary studies—often in light of their intersections with science or the social sciences (the particular innovation of this volume)."

For more information on: Rens Bod, Jaap Maat, and Thijs Weststeijn (Editors): The Making of the Humanities, Vol. 3: The Modern Humanities, see the review by Katherine Arens.

List of Papers and Panels of "The Making of the Humanities V" Online

The next Making of the Humanities conference will take place at Johns Hopkins University, 5-7 October 2016. Invited speakers are Karine Chemla, Anthony Grafton and Sarah Kay.  More than 100 papers on the history of the humanities and related disciplines will be presented.

Click here for the list of papers and panels.

How to Write a History of the Humanities

Some time ago, I had a two-hour debate with James Turner (author of "Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities") on how to write the history of the humanities. Not long after this debate, Anne van Dam (PhD student at Leiden University) wrote this interesting paper on our debate.

"On the first of February the early modern historical colloquium on the history of the humanities took place in the fully packed Sweelinck room of Utrecht University. For this extended colloquium the university invited Prof. dr. Rens Bod and Prof. dr. James Turner, two authors of seminal publications on the history of the humanities. Rens Bod is a professor of Digital Humanities and co-director of the Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and author of A New History of the Humanities, published in Dutch in 2010. James Turner is the Cavanaugh Professor of Humanities at the University of Notre Dame and author of Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities, which appeared in 2014. The afternoon at Utrecht University was the first time the two scholars met for a lively debate on the subject of the history of the humanities."

Click here to read the full paper.

Join the Election for the Best History Book Ever!

The Dutch 'Historisch Nieuwsblad' has organized an election for the best history book ever. You could for example vote for De Vergeten Wetenschappen which is the original Dutch version of A New History of the Humanities. Enjoy!

Click here for the election.

Opening Vossius Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences

The History of Humanities in Amsterdam will be institutionalized by the new Vossius Center for the History of Humanities and Sciences.

The Vossius Center will be officially opened on Monday 27 June, 15.00h-18.00h, at the place where Gerardus Vossius held his inaugural lecture in 1632. Speakers include Dymph van den Boom, Frank van Vree, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Haun Saussy, Joep Leerssen, Julia Kursell, Jeroen van Dongen and Rens Bod. The afternoon will be concluded with the presentation of the new journal "History of Humanities".

All those interested in attending the opening of the Vossius Center are welcome. The full program will follow soon. Since places are allotted on a first-come, first-serve basis, please register as early as possible (no later than 15 May) at http://vossius.uva.nl/

On Vossius: In 1632, the polymath Gerardus Vossius became the first professor at the newly founded Athenaeum Illustre, the precursor of the current University of Amsterdam. Besides being a historian, he was a literary scholar, grammarian, rhetorician and theologian. In his work on chronology he combined astronomical with historical evidence. He also wrote the first overview of the history and theory of classical literature. Four of his children became established scholars as well, but only Isaac survived his father to become one of the most famous intellectuals of Europe. A Fellow of the Royal Society, Isaac Vossius was prolific as a philologist, geographer but also published on tidal motions, on optics, on painting, on China and on the age of the world. He argued that the earth had to be much older than could be derived from the Bible. The internationally well connected father and son Vossius crossed disciplines, mixed methods and engaged with the past to make sense of the present. Their multi-talented Amsterdam-based family reflects the Center’s central theme to arrive at a global, post-disciplinary history of knowledge.

Inaugural Issue of the new journal "History of Humanities" has been published!

"These are exciting times for the humanities. The impressive corpus of knowledge that the humanities have discovered, created, and cultivated over many centuries is available for the benefit of more people than ever and evolving rapidly. Fresh perspectives open up as digital tools enable researchers to explore questions that not long ago were beyond their reach and even their imagination. Novel fields of research deal with phenomena emerging in a globalizing culture, enabling us to make sense of the way in which new media affect our lives. Cross-fertilization between disciplines leads to newly developed methods and results, such as the complex chemical analysis of the materials of ancient artworks, yielding data that were unavailable to both artists and their publics at the time of production, or neuroscientific experiments shedding new light on our capacity for producing and appreciating music."

Click here for the full issue.

"A New History of the Humanities" will be translated into Italian and Korean

I am very happy to announce that A New History of the Humanities will also be translated into Italian and Korean. The contracts with the publishers have been signed and the translations are expected to appear in 2017. So far, the originally Dutch book "De Vergeten Wetenschappen" has been or is being translated into English, Chinese, Polish, Armenian, Ukrainian, Korean and Italian.

Positions in the History of Humanities

Our project "The Flow of Cognitive Goods: Towards a Post-Disciplinary History of Knowledge" has two fully funded PhD positions on the following topic:

"Historiography of both the humanities and the sciences is almost invariably carried out within the confines of modern disciplinary categories. This produces a serious problem: crucial processes of knowledge transfer receive insufficient attention or are not studied at all, even though great innovations are often produced when disciplinary boundaries are crossed. Disciplinary historiography tends to obscure that academic disciplines are not static but dynamic and implicitly keeps the idea intact that the sciences and the humanities are distinct endeavours. To solve these problems we propose to move beyond the disciplinary approach and to write a, what we will call, ‘post-disciplinary’ history of knowledge. Our project will focus on the period from 1800 to 2000, because in this period the process of formation and institutionalization of modern disciplinary categories has taken place. We intend to leave disciplinary biases behind yet at the same time wish to provide the means to come to a better understanding of the construction of disciplinary categories. To this end, we will focus on what we call ‘cognitive goods’: the epistemic notions and objects (i.e. ‘goods’) that are transferred when knowledge is increased by crossing or transcending disciplinary boundaries. Examples of ‘cognitive goods’ are research methods, formalisms, virtues, theoretical concepts, metaphors, and argumentative and demonstrative techniques."

Click here for more information.

Criticism as Science?

Here is a column by Alessandro Pagnini on Criticism as Science which discusses my book. It's in Italian, published in Il Sole 24 Ore:

"Recentemente un linguista olandese, Rens Bod (A New History of the Humanities, Oxford) ha insinuato che è proprio da quella differenza, poi istituzionalizzata, che nasce un chiaro complesso di inferiorità delle humanities: siccome è la scienza che, dopo Galileo e Cartesio e a dispetto di Vico, è progredita e si è dimostrata “vera” conoscenza a servizio dell’uomo, della società, dell’economia, il resto della cultura, confinato alla contingenza e, per il suo valore di verità, tutt’al più al consenso delle genti, ha voluto dimostrare almeno una sua importanza indiretta, o per l’educazione, o per la coscienza e la responsabilità civile di una cittadinanza democratica (come intende, per esempio, Martha Nussbaum)."

Click here for the full article.

A New History of the Humanities reviewed in Isis

My book A New History of the Humanities was reviewed in Isis, the premier journal devoted to the history of science. The review turns out to be a typical history-of-science-review: it is very positive about the content of my book but the reviewer doesn't see why we need a history of the humanities after all. Clearly there is still some mission work to do. The history of the humanities is the missing link in the history of knowledge!

"In many respects this book is a remarkable achievement, and it is hard to imagine a reader who will not learn from it—such is the book’s coverage that very few will know as much as the unimaginably erudite author. Via four long chapters covering antiquity, the Middle Ages, the early modern era, and the modern period, Rens Bod provides a history of the respective developments in linguistics, historiography, philology, musicology, art theory, logic, rhetoric, and poetics. For good measure, the final chapter also includes sections on archaeology, literary and theater studies, and “All Media and Culture: From Film Studies to New Media” (p. 339). In case anyone reading this review is not yet impressed, the author takes care, under each heading, to discuss developments not just in Europe but also (when appropriate) in India, China, and the civilization of Islam. The result is undeniably impressive—and hugely informative."

Click here for the full review.

A New Translation of A New History of the Humanities

I am very pleased and impressed by this Ukrainian translation (it's the fifth one, after the English, Polish, Armenian and Chinese translations of my book):

For more info, click here.

Project on the Integrated History of Humanities and Science

While the history of the humanities can be studied as a field on its own, it is not isolated from the history of science. There have been interactions between the humanities and the sciences at any time and place, even after the infamous divide between the two areas in the early 20th century. We have just received a generous NWO grant to investigate the long-term history of the humanities and sciences, which will contain several research positions. You will hear more about it soon.

Here is a short abstract of the project:

"Academic disciplines are often seen in isolation from each other, a perception that is historically unjust: cross-pollination of ideas takes place constantly. In fact, more often than not, this is what leads to breakthroughs. In order to break down stereotypical distinctions between disciplines, historians should formulate an all-encompassing, post-disciplinary history of knowledge."

For more info, click here.  (Note that the Dutch often mistranslate 'wetenschap' into 'science', which has also happened in the linked article. 'Wetenschap' should actually be translated into the compound 'humanities and science')