The course Transnational Intellectual History: Comparative Methods
This year the annual international Tallinn Summer School (Tallinn University) presents the course Transnational Intellectual History: Comparative Methods among its choice of study programmes.
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iCal calendarThe course is primarily aimed at PhD students, but the keynote lectures are open to the general public free of charge.
Venue: room M-225, 5 Uus-Sadama 5 (TLU „Mare“ building), Tallinn.
The venue has good wheelchair access.
12 July 2022
5 pm
Prof. Georgios Varouxakis (Queen Mary, London University)
How 'Global' Can Intellectual History Be? The History of the Idea of 'the West' as a Case Study.
Ideas do not care about national borders and move along their own trajectories. Thus, modern research in intellectual history is often transnational. But what are the limits of intellectual history, what does it mean to study the spread of ideas not only transnationally but globally? The lecture focuses on the idea of the ‘West’, as it is one of those concepts about which almost every culture and society have something important and urgent to say, but which is not at all understood in the same way around the world.
Chair: Prof. Liisi Keedus (Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University)
13 July 2022
5.30 pm
Dr. Eva Piirimäe (Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu,)
Should we consider political concepts both in a particular historical context and from a long-duration perspective? The case of "self-determination of peoples".
Nowadays intellectual history is less concerned with ideas and concepts per se, and more with the ways, different people use them in their particular contemporary contexts, in order to express their opinion about the affairs of the world, to reformulate something, to persuade or contradict someone else. Yet the lecture asks: are there still reasons to map a longer history of a concept – or is it just the context that relevantly opens up its meaning? Why should we also be interested in how a concept has changed over time? How might we study and describe such transformations and journeys? The lecture concentrates on the concept of self-determination and the agenda of self-determination of peoples that have recently become increasingly topical.
Chair: Prof. Daniele Monticelli (Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University)
The lectures are in English. There is no need to register.
The course is organized by the European Research Council-supported project Between the Times: Embattled Temporalities and Political Imagination in Inter-War Europe, based at Tallinn University.
Contact:
Piret Peiker
T: 58095834
Ksenia Shmydkaya
T: 55577322