Chicago to Publish New Journal: History of Humanities
The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce the launch of 'History of Humanities', a new journal devoted to the historical and comparative study of the humanities. The first issue will be published in the spring of 2016. All four editors are members of ASCH, research group 'History and Philosophy of the Humanities'.
History of Humanities, along with the newly formed Society for the History of the Humanities, takes as its subject the evolution of a wide variety of disciplines including archaeology, art history, historiography, linguistics, literary studies, musicology, philology, and media studies, tracing these fields from their earliest developments, through their formalization into university disciplines, and to the modern day. By exploring these subjects across time and civilizations and along with their socio-political and epistemic implications, the journal takes a critical look at the concept of humanities itself.
The idea for a journal covering the history of humanities disciplines from a genuinely global perspective grew out of a series of conferences organized in Rome by the Editors over the past four years.The journal fills a conspicuous gap in the market: journals on the history of science have existed for many decades, as have journals on the history of specific humanities disciplines. History of Humanities is the first journal devoted to assembling scholarly studies on the comparative history of the humanities disciplines.
History of Humanities publishes work that transcends the history of specific humanities disciplines by comparing scholarly practices across disciplines, comparing humanistic traditions in different cultures and civilizations, relating the humanities to the natural and social sciences, and studying developments, problems, and transformations within a discipline that have wider significance for the history of knowledge in general.
The journal is equally interested in papers on questions concerning the societal relevance of the humanities from an historical perspective. Special Forum sections of the journal will present a coherent set of short papers written by different authors but devoted to a specific theme.
Editors, University of Amsterdam
- Rens Bod is a professor in digital humanities and author of the first general history of the humanities (2010, in Dutch), published in 2013 with Oxford University Press as A New History of the Humanities.
- Julia Kursell is a professor of musicology and historian of science who has published on the history of musicology, literary studies, physiology and psychology.
- Jaap Maat is a lecturer in philosophy who has published on the history of logic, the history of linguistics, and the history of philosophy.
- Thijs Weststeijn is an associate professor in art history who has published on the field of art historiography and art theory.