CFP: Introduction to Conceptual History 2022
Summer school for PhD students and advanced level Master’s degree students
15 August–26 August 2022
Centre for Nordic Studies, University of Helsinki
In August 2022 the annual summer school “Introduction to Conceptual History” will be offered by the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki. Now in its sixteenth year, the course is organized jointly by Concepta: International Research School in Conceptual History and the Standing Group on Political Concepts in the European Consortium for Political Research. An international team of distinguished scholars and visiting lecturers will engage and encourage course participants in critical discussions around key concepts in politics, the social sciences and the humanities.
The summer school seeks to familiarize younger scholars with the theories and practices of conceptual history and the study of political concepts as a style of political theorizing. The goal of conceptual history is to understand the ways in which concepts and ideas are operationalized in political life through the study of the debates on their formation, migration, translation, reinterpretation and diffusion through time and space (from the local to the global). Conceptual analysis involves the examination of the larger semantic, discursive, ideological and rhetorical settings of conceptual controversies, and requires familiarity with a variety of approaches to discourse, ideology and rhetoric. These concepts are communicated verbally, in print and through other media.
The course will introduce the main aspects of the theory and methodology of conceptual analysis through discussions on the work of Reinhart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner, but also J. G. A. Pocock, Michel Foucault, Pierre Rosanvallon and Dipesh Chakrabarty, as well as such thinkers as Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. For political science, conceptual history offers a distinct perspective for studying the activity of politics in theorizing, practices and institutions. This includes the study of historical cases as well as contemporary conceptual disputes, for example regarding human rights or the European Union. For history and other fields in the humanities, conceptual history is a means of historicizing key terms and concepts that guide our analysis as well as understanding how past actors used language to frame their existence. Special attention is also given to the spatial dimension of conceptual change by focusing on global interactions and local adaptations.
The “Introduction to Conceptual History” courses, organized since 2005, have created an efficient European and global network for young scholars in political science, history and related fields. This network can and has been used by our alumni to spread information on research positions and events, to forge new research projects, as well as to organize scholarly visits abroad.
The course will be conducted on site in Helsinki via lectures, text discussions and work-in-progress sessions.
The course welcomes Ph.D. and advanced Master’s degree students from a variety of academic disciplines.